


remember it's all pretend

by still_i_fall



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Actors, Banter, Denial of Feelings, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Mutual Pining, Sarah Bingham, Slow Burn, also, but I ran with it, idk these tags feel very serious, idk who came up with the name, pretty much these two being idiots, they say 'pretend a lot'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-06-27 18:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19796617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_i_fall/pseuds/still_i_fall
Summary: "Thought it would be harder to pretend to love someone as annoying as you, Pressman."-or harry and allie as two actors who can't stand one another (but somehow keep coming together anyway)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i really hope you're ready to witness an incredible over use of parenthesis, semicolons, and italics. 
> 
> *inspired by, in equal parts, a scorose fic that i read a lifetime ago and cannot seem to find again, beliza, and the entirety of Blonde*
> 
> (also, look, the title isn't a song lyric)
> 
> (but the song lyrics at the beginning of this chapter are from the song White Ferrari by Frank Ocean)
> 
> hope you enjoy!

**PART ONE: the start**

_we’re both so familiar_

  
  


* * *

The moment Cassandra Pressman collapses on the soundstage is also the exact moment Allie Pressman decides she wants to be an actress.

She’s standing off to the side, her eyes flitting between Harry Bingham, the neon stars and hearts drawn in highlighter on the backs of their hands, and a script right in front of her as she mouths along to the lines her sister should be saying. _Should be saying._

And Cassandra is lying on the ground, and Harry, twelve and already right on the edge of something big, is two, three steps back, far enough away that maybe he won’t catch whatever caused Cassandra to fall.

(He’d been nice to Allie earlier, the nicest person on set. They’d acted out a scene together in some far away corner, highlighting the lines in the script and laughing, laughing laughing laughing. There’d been this look on her face, the excitement, the wide eyes, and maybe it would’ve stuck around a little longer if Cassandra hadn’t pulled her away from him with a shake of her head. _Not him, Allie.)_

An ambulance is called and people are rushing everywhere, running around set, making calls. And Allie is forgotten about, pushed aside, script still in hand. Someone’s crying, an extra from an earlier scene, but that doesn’t matter, no, it doesn’t matter at all.

What matters is this: The TV show Cassandra and Harry are filming never airs, and Cassandra Pressman decides very quickly that acting isn’t important enough for her time. (She’s going to be president one day.)

But Allie’s still reading from the script. That’s how it starts. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Allie and Harry run into each other a number of times before they ever properly work together. Their families run in the same social circles, her parents both high ranking entertainment lawyers for the company his mom is the VP of. 

They attend the same performing arts schools, take the same acting classes, get dragged to the same parties. Cassandra is always off doing some school related thing, homework or an internship meant for people years older or an opportunity to shadow a famous politician, and Allie’s usually alone. 

She’s used to it. 

She’s also used to Harry Bingham being the _Golden Boy,_ able to make easy conversation with people three or four times his age, charming his way into an industry he was already born into (his dad’s an actor, talented enough for one Oscar and two Golden Globes. Famous enough to be talked about whenever someone even looks at Harry. Allie doesn’t really know that last part; at least not yet). 

She’s sick of it, sick of Harry, sick of how he always gets what he wants no matter how much he doesn’t deserve it; that part in the spring production, that spot at the talent agency, that opportunity to guest star on that TV show or co-star in that movie. She hates how everything’s just handed to him, how he doesn’t even fucking have to try. God, she has to work so hard for _everything,_ had to suffer through five separate auditions just for two lines in a movie that never even made it to a wide release. It’s not fair.

It’s a bit of a one-eighty from how she saw him when they first met, eleven and twelve and on that film set. Only it’s been a little while now, two years, and she sees how he treats the people around him, how he acts when he thinks no one’s watching. Cassandra warned her about him, and she’s seen it now, isn’t as naive as she was that first time on set. 

And they’re at a party, some industry party celebrating an award show, when he drops down into the seat across from her. She’s twirling a champagne flute of water between her fingers, bored out of her mind.

“Allie Pressman, right?” he asks with a smirk, and she makes a face back at him. He knows her name; they got into a fight in their movement class just last week. He’d said something rude about the way she stepped, and she’d pushed him hard enough to throw him off balance. 

“Yeah. Dan Bingham?” she questions, bring in his dad’s name just to annoy him. Harry glares. 

“Very funny.” He pauses, thinks for a moment. “You look so familiar. Cassandra’s sister?”

Allie offers him her widest, fakest smile. “Yep,” she says, brightly, setting the champagne flute down. “You know what, she actually mentioned you once, said you were an asshole.” She spots her parents walking towards the table and stands up. 

Harry stands with her. “Don’t mention this to her,” he whispers loudly, watching as her parents approach, pasting that smile on his face, the one from earlier, the one he always has on while talking to important people. “But, God, your sister was bossy. I’m glad she quit, if I’m being completely honest.”

Her parents are right in front of them before she can fit in a response, some snarky words right on the tip of her tongue as her dad offers Harry his hand to shake. 

“Thanks for keeping Allie company, Harry,” her mom says, and Harry smirks over at Allie. 

“My pleasure, Mrs. Pressman,” he responds, charming and smooth. Allie purses her lips. _He’s not worth it_ she tells herself. 

No, Harry Bingham is not at all worth her time.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“God, Pressman, how did _you_ get the role?”

Harry’s talking about the role of Juliet in _Romeo and Juliet._ She hates that that’s how she finds out she got the part, that all of her hard work and practice has all been boiled down to some snarky comment he’s made. She pushes past him to get a look at the cast sheet herself. 

He’s not lying. She really did get the part. 

And he got Romeo, of course, because he’s Harry fucking Bingham and who else would they give the role to when he’s right there?

“Maybe they should recast, pick someone with actual talent,” Harry stage whispers to someone nearby, and Allie swivels around to glare at him. 

“Not sure you’d want that to happen, Bingham. You’d probably end up losing your role,” she shoots back. The crowd around them collectively takes a deep breath. It’s been four, nearly five years since that day on the set with the highlighted scripts. At this point, Harry and Allie’s rivalry is well known throughout the performing arts high school they attend. 

But Harry doesn’t say anything, just smiles at her, wry and bright and _stupid,_ offering a small wave as he walks away. She counts to three before stepping away too, making a point to walk in the opposite direction of him. Someone whispers something about how _Harry and Allie will kill each other doing this play,_ and she can’t help but think that that’s probably true.

A week later, during their first rehearsal together, Harry tugs on a strand of her hair and says, “No one’s going to be able to see your face if you don’t sort out this mess.”

She narrows her eyes. “No one’s going to be able to see _your_ face if you don’t start actually opening up to the audience.”

Harry doesn’t talk to her for the rest of the rehearsal. It actually sets a bit of a precedent for them, leaves them only talking through their lines and the occasional snide remark. The director seems absolutely sick of them, but their performance is good, maybe even great, so they give up trying to fix the relationship between their two leads pretty quickly. (After, of course, two forced bonding sessions and a therapy esque rehearsal that Harry and Allie very stubbornly remained silent through.)

That precedent cracks, just a little, mere minutes before the curtains open for their first performance. Allie’s pacing backstage, her head down as she recites her lines quietly to the floor. She’s so nervous, so nervous that it just about hurts. She feels like she might just step on stage and puke in front of the whole audience. And Cassandra’s there, Cassandra’s right there, home from her fancy east coast boarding school and sitting in the second row, front and center. Her parents are there too, probably talking to Harry’s parents, or at least Harry’s mom; she heard that his dad wouldn’t be able to make it.

Speaking of Harry--

“Hey,” he calls out, and her head snaps up. God, she’s not in the mood for an argument with him, not right now. She’d step out on stage and immediately forget all of her lines, too distracted by whatever stupid thing he’d said to her. She can already see it, her making a fool of herself. 

“What, Bingham?” she asks, and it sounds almost desperate, devoid of her usual venom. She wonders if he can hear it, how nervous she is, if he can hear her breathing, see the fear on her face. God, she hopes he can’t.

But then he smiles at her, and it looks almost sincere, almost reassuring. If it was any other time, any other person, she might take note of how _nice_ it looks. “You’re going to do great, Allie. Trust me.”

It’s weird how much she does trust him.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Here’s why Harry comforts Allie:

Because he’s supposed to. It’s his job as her co-star, co-lead, to make sure that she doesn’t ruin their performance. That’s all.

He hates how long it takes, even while they’re under the lights, for him to remember that her lips against his, her smile and her gaze, clear and bright, _is_ _all pretend._ It’s not fair how good she looks, how good her hair smells, how nice it feels to have her close to him.

That’s not how they work. He needs to remember that.

And so what if later, after it’s all done, as the cast eats pizza backstage and he tries not to think about how his dad didn’t show, how his dad isn’t going to show at all throughout the plays run, he realises that his dad’s absence isn’t the only thing on his mind.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Harry’s dad dies two weeks after _Romeo and Juliet_ closes.

It’s a drug overdose, gets a whole segment on the nightly news. Her parents call Karen, offer their sympathies, and dress Allie up in black for the funeral.

She hasn’t seen Harry in about a week, and it’s hard to really look at him when she spots him. He’s got sunglasses on, but she sees him swipe at his face a couple of times.

Later, at the reception, she sits down beside him on the couch. She’s not used to this quiet version of Harry, this Harry that’s not charming his way around the room, talking to important people and reminding her much of Hollywood is just knowing the right people.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. The sunglasses are off now, and she can see that his eyes are just barely rimmed red. 

He shrugs, silent, and she moves just barely closer, resting her head lightly on his shoulder. She wonders if this is crossing a line, but he doesn’t move. If anything, he shifts closer.

She tries to think of this as her paying him back for what he did on the opening night of _Romeo and Juliet._ She just owed him, that’s all. That’s why she’s there.

When he returns to school a few days later, it’s almost like he’s normal, normal as they shoot back and forth comments about messy hair and bad breath and lack of talent. They don’t talk about the funeral, and she tries to ignore that blank look in his eyes that he gets sometimes when he thinks that no one’s watching because that’s just not how her and Harry work. They don’t go around comforting each other, and they don’t lean too far past rivals in terms of relationship. 

That’s okay.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It’s a bit of a relief when Harry finally graduates. This is finally her time, her time to star in a play and not have to worry about him as her co-lead. Maybe she has a chance, a real chance, to never have to act with him again. God, that’d be nice.

Only, she almost misses him, misses their rivalry and that back and forth. It was comforting, she realises, standing across from some kid in her own grade who’s _nice_ to her, who laughs at her jokes and tells her that _she’s really talented_ more than just once.

She pushes that idea out of her mind. It doesn’t make any sense, her missing Harry Bingham. No, it doesn’t make any sense at all.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She’s not sure she likes New York.

Her acting college, the fancy one with the audition process that left her stressed beyond belief, is right in the middle of the city. 

She’s not sure she likes the weather, how the winters get so cold, and how the sky is always a little gray, the air always a little muggy. She’s not sure she likes the people, how fast they move, busy, always having a place they need to be at. She should be used to big city life-- she’s from LA for God Sake. She’s not sure she could ever get used to how fast everything moves in New York, though. 

But maybe it’s not the city. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s struggling, really struggling at this new school. 

Everything’s made worse by the fact that Harry’s there too, a year ahead and, by the looks of it, thriving in this new setting. He’s still got his head held high, and that familiar effortless charisma. People love him. Maybe she doesn’t like that. 

School, college, has just made her more aware of the future. Nothing’s easy. There are no guarantees. She needs to decide whether or not she _really_ wants this dream, and she needs to decide it _right now._ She’s not sure if she’s ready for that. 

She calls Cassandra after a particularly bad performance review, afraid that she’ll lose her spot at the college, afraid that she’ll have to start all over, that that’ll be that. 

“Cass,” she says, small and quiet. She’s curled up on the bed in her dorm room. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

Cassandra refuses to hear it.

“You need to learn to fight for your dreams,” her sister tells her, stern and kind somehow at the same time. “You’re so talented, Al, so much more talented than I ever was. You’ll be okay. I promise.”

Two weeks later, Allie gets a part in the spring production of _Hamlet._ She takes a hesitant breath. She swears she spots Harry in the audience of the show, opening night, her so nervous that it hurts, even as she takes her bow. Oddly, seeing him is comforting too (until he opens his mouth after the show and says the usual shit just to upset her).

Cass is right. Allie starts fighting for her dreams. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


It’s not that he’s purposely avoiding her. They just make a point to keep their paths from crossing. It’s better that way for everyone.

He ends up at the opening night of _Hamlet_ because his roommate from freshman year, Jason Alvarado, is in the show. He brings a bouquet of roses with him as a joke to throw up onto the stage when it’s over. 

He does not expect to see Allie.

He’s seen her around campus before, rushing between classes, her head down. It’s not the Allie he’s used to. He’s used to her being loud, her being _right there,_ reminding him that he needs to do better. He’s used to her annoying the fuck out of him, getting under his skin just for the fun of it.

“It was fun watching you drown, Pressman,” he calls out to her after the play as the cast mingles a bit with the audience. She makes a face at him. 

“Nice to see you too, Bingham.”

“Don’t think you properly unhinged enough in that last scene, though. Maybe work on that?”

She rolls her eyes, flipping him off before turning away to talk to someone else. 

He doesn’t think he’s ever going to get used to Allie Pressman.

  
  


* * *

  
  


During the end of her college years, she does a few off-Broadway plays and guest stars in a couple episodes of _Law and Order._ As soon as college is over, though, the second she’s off that stage with her diploma in hand, she’s on a flight back to LA.

And then she spots it, her big break. It’s this teen dystopian movie series called _New Ham_ that’s already been greenlit for a sequel before it’s even been shot. It’s set up as a trilogy and, if done right, could make her famous, give her the type of recognition that she’s always dreamed of. She wants it so bad it hurts. 

She’s gotten close before, close enough that her dreams almost feel like reality. She was in talks to star in this indie film, something produced by A24 and directed by someone with a little bit of previous success. It’d come down to her and just one other girl. 

Allie hadn’t gotten the part. 

This time, though, she’s not giving it up. She’ll do whatever it takes. 

Even if whatever it takes has something to do with Harry Bingham.

He’s right there when she walks into the audition room, standing in the front near the panel of people-- the casting director, a producer, the writer, the director. He’s right there and she hasn’t seen him in forever, not since college, not since they started avoiding each other, left only to glares if they ever saw the other walking by. Once, she’d stumbled into the student showcase to get away from the rain and saw him performing a monologue. It’d been good, but she’d left before giving him a chance to notice her. 

But now he’s right in front of her, smirking over, something like surprise etched into the corners of his face. She thinks that maybe, if this didn’t have the potential to be huge, if she didn’t want this so bad, she’d get up and leave right now. Yeah, she really would. That’s how much she doesn’t want to work with him. 

But she wants this. She wants this to be hers. She doesn’t want to miss out again. No, not when she’s already _so_ close.

“Allie Pressman?” the casting director asks, and Allie pulls her gaze away from Harry before nodding. “Okay. Go ahead and start whenever you’re ready.”

For a second, she’s afraid that he’s going to half ass the audition just to ruin her career. He already has the part; she’s the one they’re auditioning. 

He doesn’t, though. No, instead it’s just about the opposite, him pulling her in and reminding her exactly why their drama teacher didn’t end up killing them in high school. 

They’re _good,_ she realises as he shouts at her, something about how _unfair everything is,_ and she’s shouting back, matching his passion and energy with some of her own. She feels herself falling in the role, finds tears running down her face as he yells _this is all your fault,_ as he kisses her to end the scene.

As she’s wiping the tears away, trying to hide just how happy she is, she hears one of the members of the panel say something about how that was the best audition of the day. Another mentions chemistry, real chemistry, between her and Harry, and it takes all of her willpower not to get her hopes too far up. 

The casting panel moves for a break, and Harry follows her out of the room. When she turns around, makes eye contact with him, she swears that his usual smirk is verging on the edge of becoming a smile.

“Hate to admit it, but you were pretty good in there, Pressman.”

“You too, Bingham.” She’s so fucking happy and excited and unable to contain it anymore. _This could be it._ Harry must notice all of that, so of course he tries to knock her down.

“Forgot how hard it was to pretend to love someone as annoying as you.”

Her smile very quickly evaporates, morphing into a glare. “You just don’t know when to shut up, do you?” she says, and Harry’s mouth opens to spit back some sharp retort, but the casting director calls him back into the room before he can. He makes a face at her as he walks away and she makes one right back. 

Allie does not know how anyone sees anything even sort of resembling chemistry.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She gets the news that the part is hers less than a week later. She very nearly cries just out of pure relief because as of right now _she has a future._

Harry Bingham is the farthest thing from her mind.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It doesn’t surprise him when he hears that she got the part. She was good. She’s always been good.

He forgot what it was like acting with her. He forgot how much he liked it.

They’re good _together._

  
  


* * *

  
  


He shows up late to the first table read for _New Ham_ and she wants to kill him. It’s like he doesn’t understand that this is _her future_ that he’s fucking with by being unprofessional. He’s never had to understand stuff like that; no matter what he does, his future, bright lights and stardom, is always going to be there for him. 

God, she forgot what it was like to work with him.

“What the fuck, Bingham,” she whispers, elbowing him sharply in the ribs just as he’s finished sitting down. He winces and she leans in close so that her whisper will get to feel a little more like a shout. She doesn’t feel like drawing the attention of the rest of the cast. Her and Harry will have a chance to reveal their inability to get along once they actually get on set. “How difficult is it to just show up on time to the first fucking day?”

Harry shrugs. “Needed a coffee,” he says casually, holding up the to-go cup like it’s some excuse for his tardiness. It takes all she has not to swipe it out of his hand.

“There’s coffee here.”

Harry scoffs. That sound is so familiar, brings her back to being fifteen and blocking the balcony scene in _Romeo and Juliet._ They’d gotten into a fight over whether or not him stepping a half step closer to her was necessary. The director had refused to get between the two of them. “I wouldn’t call that shit coffee.”

Allie (very sadly) agrees with him, glancing down at her own still full cup before glaring back up at him.

She sighs. “Just don’t do it again,” she says, taking a pained sip of her coffee. It tastes a whole lot like defeat. She hates it.

“Will do your majesty,” he retorts, bringing a hand up to salute her. She has to bite the inside of her lip hard to keep from saying anything stupid to him, even as the director, a man named Pieffer who’s been in the business for forever, starts to introduce himself.

The rest of the table read goes well, but she still makes a point to leave before Harry and can say anything else to her. She’s not excited for the rest of this shoot.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She's seated next to him at the table read. They’re pressed close enough that they’re elbows brush when they turn the page. She keeps glancing over at his coffee, and he makes a mental note to bring her one too next time. Maybe that’d put her in a better mood.

(Her hair smells the same as it did when they were fifteen, and he doesn’t know how to feel.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


A lot of the time, the shoot reminds her of college rather than high school.

They’re both trying to remain professional, neither wanting a screaming match over how one of them says a line to follow them throughout Hollywood, an anecdote left somewhere in the back of the mind of casting panels during important moments. They part in opposite directions after takes and make a point to not stand anywhere near one another at craft services. A couple of times, he’s brought her coffee, which was weird, but she mostly ignores that because they don’t talk then either.

It’s all working out. Their acting is good, and she’s almost having fun, bonding with different members of the cast and crew. There’s Elle who’s in charge of Allie’s hair and make-up while on set and is also quite possibly one of the nicest people Allie’s ever met. And then there’s Helena too, who plays Allie’s best friend in the film. They like to get dinner, or just ice cream sometimes, after filming is done for the day. Luke, Helena’s boyfriend who has a small role, will come with them sometimes. Allie doesn’t mind him, but whenever Luke comes along, Harry always follows. 

That’s the part she has a little trouble with.

“Rocky Road, Pressman, what are you, five?”

She rolls her eyes at him, sitting down at a park bench while Helena and Luke act all couplely inside the shop. They’re waiting for a hot fudge sundae that Allie plans on stealing lots of. “Oh fuck you, Bingham. You’re eating plain vanilla ice cream which is probably one of the most boring things ever.”

Harry scoffs. “It’s a classic for a reason.” 

“Only sociopaths pick vanilla at an ice cream shop.”

Harry shrugs and they’re silent for a moment. A bit of ice cream melts onto her hand, and he hands her a napkin. “You think we’ve been doing good, Pressman?” he asks, and she pauses, stares over at him. He almost looks nervous, which she isn’t really used to.

“With the movie, you mean?” He nods. “Yeah, I think we’ve been doing really well. I think it’ll be a big hit.”

Harry smiles, and she smiles back, something soft. This isn’t normal for them. It’s freaking her out a little, honestly, so she's happy when Helena and Luke exit the shop with the hot fudge sundae, four spoons in hand.

She tries to ignore Harry's eyes on her. This isn’t something she should get used to.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She makes a point to try to forget about their first big kissing scene. It shouldn’t be awkward-- they’re professionals. This is their job. But still, kissing Harry Bingham isn’t on her list of favorite things to do. She actually doesn’t have a list. Lists are more Cassandra’s thing, really. 

They’re on a sound stage, boiling under the lights. Elle keeps have to reapply her make-up after every take. They’re already five takes in and she is so fucking sick of this scene.

_“I can’t do it,” Kathryn says softly, shaking her head as she stares down at the ground. “It can’t be me.”_

_“It has to be you,” Alex says firmly, pushing her chin up and forcing her to look him in the eye. She’s crying, tears spilling down her face. “You’re the only one who can.”_

_“I don’t want it by default,” she pushes back, pulling away from him and shaking her head again. It’s harsh now. She’s tired of being quiet._

_“Kat, you’re the strongest one out of all of us. You’re better than the rest of us. You’re the only one good enough to do it. We need you.” They stare at one another, and his eyes flit from her eyes to her lips and then back again. She bites her lip, and he pulls her even closer, moves to convince her in the only other way he knows how._

_The kiss is slow and sweet, his hands cupping her face and grounding her right there. Her arms wrap around his neck, her eyes closed, sinking in just slightly._

Harry’s tracing the freckles drawn on to her cheeks, waiting for Pffiefer to yell cut. They stay like that for a moment longer, in a sort of limbo, before both realising that the _cut_ doesn’t seem to be coming. As he blinks down at her, something delicate in his eyes, she figures that he’s still acting. He must be as he pulls away just barely from her only to rest his head on top of hers, his nose pressed gently into her hair. 

She pushes herself back into Kathryn’s mindset, lets herself fall back into that sort of desperation for something _real._ She’s a teen again, tired but in love, just waiting for the moment when everything feels normal. As she closes her eyes and leans into him, she thinks that maybe this is the best acting she’s ever done (only maybe it’s not really acting, because she keeps smelling his cologne, and it keeps pulling her back into herself. She needs to remember to remind him to change the scent to something more inconspicuous).

“Perfect!” Pffiefer shouts, and Harry and Allie pull apart, stepping away from each other just a bit slower than the previous takes. He’s looking at her strangely now, almost as if they’re something more than just reluctant co-stars, even going so far as to shoot her a half smile before walking away. 

Allie smiles back.

She’s not sure what changed, of if anything changed, really, but something feels different. She can’t decide if that’s good or bad.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He has to learn to draw a clear line between them and their characters, because this isn’t normal, him getting wrapped up in a scene, him smelling Allie Pressman’s hair, him smiling at her after takes. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, this thought appears, this thought that says that maybe she’s someone he cares about. God, he’s not ready for that.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They actually talk towards the end of filming. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s almost over, that the shoot for the second film is far enough away that they can pretty much ignore it if they want to. They’re civil to each other, able to stand side by side at craft services, able to not get into fights over the last donut (it was one time and it was ugly and now the poor person in charge of craft services always buys extra maple bars). 

“You want the last slice?” she asks, offering him the box. Luke had ordered in from a restaurant in town boxes of pizza to celebrate his last day on set. Allie and Harry are done in just over two weeks and are both mildly jealous of Luke.

“We could split it?” he offers, and her eyebrows scrunch together. 

“How the fuck do you split a slice of pizza?”

“I don’t know,” he says defensively, and Allie laughs into her hand. He smiles over at her. Neither eat the last slice.

Being civil at craft services turns into listening to music together between takes, sharing earbuds and singing along. Harry makes _Spotify_ playlists for different moods, and she only barely makes fun of him for it. He doesn’t make fun of her at all when she cries to _Liability_ by Lorde.

It’s almost scary how quickly they become comfortable around one another. It shouldn’t be, though. They’ve known each other since they were kids, almost constantly in one another’s orbit. Their high school drama teacher would probably die of shock seeing them today. That actually makes Allie laugh a little. 

They’ve lost the reluctant part. Now they’re just co-stars. (And also maybe friends. Maybe.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


They hug at the end of shooting, her face pressed into his neck, him holding on for a second long than he probably should.

“See you later, Bingham,” she says as she walks away, towards some black studio car that’ll take her back to her apartment. 

He waves. “See you later, Pressman.”

He really never did think he’d consider himself friends with one of the Pressman sisters. Huh.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She’s able to take a very small part in some small A24 movie before press starts. It’s a welcome break from the hecticness of the world of big budget Hollywood films. Her co-stars are all very nice to her, friendly, but only to the point of politeness. 

Once again, she finds herself almost missing Harry Bingham.

It’s strange how nice it is to see him again, how it’s a bit of a comfort, really, him being there beside her. She never expected this. She really did think they’d suffer through three films as reluctant co-stars. 

And, somehow, he makes the press circuit just a little more bearable.

It’s only really him and her through most of it. Helena tags along for some parts, and Luke is there for the bigger group press bits. The cast is pretty small right now, though, set to expand in the second and third films. And most of the tour is spent traveling around the globe, answering the same questions over and over again. (God, she thinks she’ll go crazy if she has to talk about her _favorite day on set_ one more time.) She has the most fun in the interviews where it’s mostly just her and Harry talking.

Her favorite part of the press tour is when they do the _Wired Autocomplete_ interview. 

Maybe (mostly) because she gets to hit Harry with the cardboard pieces of poster paper the questions are stuck to. That part definitely makes her day.

That’s how the video starts, actually. They don’t realise that the cameras are rolling, though, not as they fight over who gets to go first. 

“Ladies first,” Allie argues, and Harry shakes his head. 

“I’m older than you; I go first.”

“That makes literally zero sense.”

Allie lifts up one of the boards, and Harry swats it out of her hand. She lets out a loud gasp, looking behind the camera as if to make sure that someone else saw him do it. Someone laughs and she grins, victorious, picking up another board to hit on him on the head. She’s a little afraid that the board will snap, but only a little. 

“Stop bullying me, Pressman,” Harry cries out, shielding his face. 

Allie’s still grinning. “Let me go first.”

“If you don’t stop, I’ll peel back all the questions on your boards.”

She gasps, rather dramatically. Someone laughs again, maybe Harry this time, she’s not sure. “You wouldn’t.”

“We both know I would.”

She stops hitting him with the board, and he raises his hands as if to surrender. “Rock paper scissors?” he offers, and she makes a face but agrees. 

She ends up holding a board full of questions for him, watching as he peels back the paper. She’s desperate to do it for him, but swears her publicist is glaring at her from somewhere on set. 

“What is…” he reads. “Harry Bingham’s favorite song.”

Allie scoffs as though it’s a question everyone should know the answer to. _“White Ferrari_ by Frank Ocean. Harry enjoys feeling sad.”

He ignores that last part, instead grinning at her before singing, _“Care for you still and I will…”_

She rolls her eyes-- God, it's not fair how good he is at singing-- but still joins in to sing, _“Foreveeeeeer,”_ leaning their heads towards one another and smiling. It feels a bit like they’re on set again, one of those final days where they really getting along.

After a few more questions, they move on to her board. “Who is…” she starts, peeling back the paper and throwing it blindly at Harry who easily dodges it. “Allie Pressman's sister.”

“Oh that’s easy,” Harry says. “Cassandra Pressman.”

“Yep. Okay, next question. Who is… Allie Pressman dating?” she lets out a little laugh. “No one, as of right now, but if anyone wants to, they can audition for the part.”

Harry’s staring at her cautiously, like he’s afraid what he says next will mess something up. “Can I audition?”

Allie doesn’t even hesitate before answering, taking a chance and flirting right back. “You don’t have to. If you want the part, it’s yours.”

She doesn’t think much of their words, because _it’s all pretend._

The internet does, though.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_HarryBinghamsReallyHot - omg if u havn’t seen this interview yet pls watch it rn because my babies are SO CUTE_

_kat &alex4eva - shit r they dating #they’ve gotta be #right? #idek anymore _

_alliepressmanfanaccount - her hitting him on the head w the board was the biggest mood ever #i ship it_

_kalexnation - I, much like Harry Bingham, am also in love with Allie Pressman #youre not special harry #get in line_

_IdLiveInNewHam - is is just me or do other people want a full cover of white f_ _errari_

_#hallie_ trends briefly on twitter, and Allie’s phone keeps blowing up with her Instagram tags and twitter mentions. People keep discovering other interviews the two of them have done, the near incessant bickering over the smallest of things (types of donuts, favorite place to film, LA vs New York, the list goes on forever). People mistake the bickering for flirting, which it most definitely is not. And any flirting they do do-- purely for promotional purposes. Obviously. 

People start to think things, start to say things about the state of her relationship with a co-star that she is just only beginning to admit she might be friends with. She thinks about tweeting something out to clarify the situation, say something like _lol harry and i are NOT dating_ but her publicist would probably kill her and people would still find a way to misinterpret it.

It’s whatever. It’ll probably just go away.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The success of the first film moves up shooting for the subsequent second and third movies. Weirdly, Harry finds himself excited to spend time on set with her again.

(He doesn’t think about everything going on on the internet because it’s all just faceless strangers speculating about other people’s lives. He does think about how well he can smell Allie’s hair when she hides her face in his shoulder during interviews. He thinks about that a lot.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


The amount of time she’s about to have to spend with Harry Bingham is a little bit daunting now that they’re shooting the second and third films back to back. It’s months and months of rehearsals and shooting. It’ll be a bit like high school again, which is an analogy she really can’t make anymore seeing as they can now be in the same room without fighting. Progress. They really should call up their old drama teacher. 

On the first day, Harry drops a tea (she’d told him while they shot the first film that she’ll take tea over coffee any day) off in hair and make-up for her, offering a tired smile that she easily returns. It’s sets a precedent for the future, him showing up in the hair and make-up trailer just a little earlier than he needs to and them talking like two people who don’t hate each other. 

“So you guys are friends now?” Elle asks, trying to understand the situation. Elle spent all of the first film listening to Allie rant about what an asshole Harry was when they were younger, and even more time watching the two of them avoid one another like the plague. Allie figures she has a right to be confused.

Allie takes a sip of the tea he’d brought her. It’s Earl Gray with just a splash of cream and she does not know how he knew how she takes her tea. “I guess?” she says, her face scrunching up until Elle hits her with a make-up brush. “We’re not not friends, you know?”

Elle sighs. “Well being on set is a lot less stressful with you two not spending every waking minute glaring at each other.”

“Hey, we were good for the last few weeks of shooting the first film,” Allie argues, and Elle rolls her eyes. 

“You two were _civil._ Now you guys are actually friendly. There’s a difference.”

Elle’s right. 

At craft services, snacking on little bags of goldfish, they take turns asking each other questions that they should’ve learned the answer to years ago seeing how long they’ve known one another. It’s surprising the amount of weird stuff she does already know about Harry Bingham. 

“Favorite color?” he asks, and she laughs at him, throwing a goldfish at his face that he catches in his mouth easily. 

“That’s a stupid question,” she says, trying (and failing) to catch a goldfish in her own mouth when he tosses one. 

“You come up with a better one,” he challenges knowing damn well that Allie Pressman is not one to back down from a challenge.

“Favorite _Buzzfeed_ quiz,” she shoots back, and he throws his head back laughing.

“Those ones that tell you what type of food you are.”

Allie snorts. “Those are my favorite too,” she shouts, loud enough to draw the attention of members of the crew. They’re both laughing now, so hard that it almost hurts. 

(Neither notice one of their co-stars recording their entire exchange. Helena posts it on Instagram. _#hallie_ trends on twitter for the second time.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


He’s starting to hear her laugh everywhere. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t like it.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She doesn’t realise that he drives himself to set until they arrive at the same time, the sun just barely rising somewhere on the horizon. It’s never happened before, but she knows that he’s doing some voice over work early this morning before his normal work day begins. 

“Is that your car?” she asks, pointing at the expensive thing that very much looks like something he’d drive as she steps out of the black studio SUV that’s been taking her to work for the past year. She’s complete shit at driving, failed the test twice. To this day she thinks that her mom might have bribed the DMV into giving her her license. It would make sense.

“Yep,” he says casually, popping the ‘p’ and closing the car door behind him, a little beeping noise going off as he locks it.

“You drive to set?” she asks, her words a little louder now as she struggles to keep up with his brisk walk toward the studio. He’s probably late. (And she is exceedingly early. _Hallie_ shippers are delusional if they think they’re in any way compatible.)

“Yep.”

“I don’t believe that you can actually drive.”

“Not all of us are inept, Pressman.”

_“Not all of us are inept, Pressman,”_ she repeats back, mockingly, jogging a little now to get out in front of him. She’s always liked to to do this when he was walking too fast for her to keep up-- get out in front of him and then slow down to a snail's pace. He hates it, once pushed her into a bush when she did it in high school.

Harry makes a face at her, and she makes one right back before he moves past her to open the door to the studio. “I’ll give you a ride sometime,” he says, not even bothering to turn around. 

Allie slows to a near stop, smiling to herself just because she knows he won’t see. “I’m holding you to that, Bingham,” she jokes, and he turns around, rolling his eyes and waving good-bye.

She doesn’t actually think he was being serious. Only, at the end of the day, he’s waiting outside her trailer for her, pulling her beside him and towards his car. 

“What?” he asks when he catches a glimpse of the surprise on her face. “I told you I would.”

She pauses, blinks up at him. “If you crash,” she finally says. “I will kill you.”

Harry grins back at her, brighter than the setting sun. She’s grinning too, she realises. “You worry too much, Pressman.”

He drives with the top down, the wind in her hair, the last of the sun melting down the horizon. She thinks that maybe they could be friends one day, proper ones who would hang out even after all of this was over. 

Not that she’d ever admit that.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He adds driving to the list of things he now can’t do without thinking of Allie Pressman. The list is getting quite long.

(When he drops her off, he tells her to _ask for a ride anytime._ It’s not the least bit sarcastic. As he drives away, he swears his car smells a little like her.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


Three days later, she takes him up on his offer for _a ride anytime._ She texts Harry that her driver wouldn’t be able to pick her up which is only partly a lie. Really, her driver would've only been a half hour late, but she didn’t want to have to deal with being a little late. She wanted to have to deal with him. He texts her back almost immediately that he’ll _be there in fifteen minutes,_ and makes no mention of other potential modes of transportation she could take to work instead, no complaints of having to put up with her.

She thinks that maybe she could get used to this. 

He’s there in ten minutes, shooting her a text as he pulls up to the curb. They live on the same block, accidentally rented houses near one another. Once, she’d even spotted him at the grocery store. He’d taken one look at her (or at least she thinks he took one look at her, she can’t be sure because he was wearing sunglasses in the store like a fucking douche) before turning around. She’d turned around too, but, later, when she spotted him in the produce section, she still lobbed a piece of fruit at his head.

“Thanks again, Harry,” she says, pulling her seat belt across her body. The top of the car isn’t down anymore, and somehow that makes this all feel more real.

“It’s no problem.” He yawns quietly a moment after he says that, though, and she wonders when exactly he actually needs to be on set. She ignores the idea that he might be hours early just for her because that idea is stupid and not one she needs in her mind right now.

“So,” she starts after a moment. “Badminton or tennis?” She just wants this drive to feel normal and nothing feels more normal than them asking each other dumb questions to get rid of awkward silence. 

He’s quick to respond. “Badminton because I’m still a little bit scared of tennis balls after that one time you threw a bunch at my head. Which hurt, by the way.”

Allie laughs. “We were thirteen and you were being a dick,” she says, as though it’s some sort of justification. God, that was over ten years ago. Fuck.

“Blueberries or strawberries?” he asks, turning onto that one street with the good coffee shop and shifting into park while she thinks. 

“Blueberries,” she answers. “Why are you parking?”

“Because we need caffeine,” he says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He’s putting on a pair of those sunglasses he always likes to wear out in public, reaching over her to open the glove compartment and offer her a pair too. She finds herself accepting them.

“Do you use fake names when you order?” she asks, and he nods, faux seriously. 

“I think I’m going to be Vlad today.” That makes her laugh so hard that it hurts, and he’s laughing too. _Vlad_ really does get written on their to-go cups, and Elle rolls her eyes so far back when she sees it.

Later, when the paparazzi pictures of them are all over the internet and _#hallie_ is trending for the third time, even she has to admit that they look a little like a couple.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He keeps driving her to and from work. They tell people that it’s to save the environment. She finds herself liking spending time with him.

  
  


* * *

  
  


His car smells like her. He doesn’t mind.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“So,” Harry starts, turning the corner off of their street. They’re driving to work again, the sun already up. Allie’s got a script in her lap, but it’s useless seeing as she already knows most of her lines. She likes to doodle on the margins, though. Harry's yet to make fun of her for it. “You’re close with you sister, right?”

Allie looks over at him. “Yes?”

He sighs, his shoulders dropping a little. He seems nervous, for some reason. She’s a little nervous too, all of the sudden. “Let’s say that your younger sister who you have not seen in forever was visiting. What would you do with her?”

“How soon is she visiting?”

Harry’s face scrunches up a little. She thinks it’s guilt spread across his features. “Tomorrow.”

Allie rolls her eyes. God, this is so like him, procrastinating to the point of failure. She remembers getting so annoyed at him when he'd put off learning his lines until the very last minute, would throw scripts at his face and make a point to memorize his lines for him. “Well it’s a short day tomorrow since we leave on Sunday for Massachusetts to shoot that one sequence, so I guess you could have her come by set and then take her out after for dinner or to the beach or something,” Allie offers, and he shoots her the most grateful of smiles. 

“You are a literal life saver, Pressman.”

“You owe me a free tea and scone.”

He’s still smiling, grinning over at her while the light is red. “Done.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Harry doesn’t usually bring all that many people by set. There’s the occasional girlfriend-- usually a model, usually relatively nice, always never lasts too long. Sometimes he’ll bring by old friends, some of which Allie recognizes from high school. There was Jason Alvarado once too, who she remembered from _Hamlet_ her freshman year of college. And his mom’s stopped by a couple times, offering tight smiles to the rest of the cast and crew, drawing Allie in for a quick hug before she left. 

Allie recognizes his sister almost immediately. She thinks back to the funeral. The girl was four then, sticking near her mom the entire day. 

“Hey,” Allie calls out, slipping off the jacket that’s a part of her costume before she absolutely boils on the sound stage. They don't have to shoot for another hour or so, everything pushed back just a little. “Sarah, right?”

The girl nods. She has the same hair as Harry, dark brown and a mess of unruly curls. “And you’re Allie Pressman. Don’t tell my brother,” she stage whispers, shooting a glance at Harry who is already smiling from ear to ear. “But I like your character a lot more than his.”

Allie grins down at her. “I do too. Has he given you a tour of set yet?”

Sarah makes a face. That reminds Allie of Harry too. “A bit. Haven’t seen the costume department yet, though, which is my favorite part.”

Allie looks at Harry, raising an eyebrow ever so slightly to ask _is this okay?_ He nods. “I can take you guys to the costume trailer,” she offers. “Maybe we can try on some of my extra outfits.”

“Yeah?” Sarah asks, excited, glancing up at her brother.

Harry nods again. “Yeah.”

They take her around the rest of set, ending up at craft services just before they’re about to start shooting. They let Sarah have the last donut, and leave her with Elle who seems excited to have someone to gossip with.

Later, just before they’re about to leave, Allie prepared to call an uber home, Harry asks, “If you’re not busy, would you want to come out to eat with Sarah and I? She likes you a lot, and I’m afraid it’ll be awkward or something without someone else around.”

Allie puts away her phone. “Sure, I’d love to.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


They end up at some fancy restaurant downtown, the three of them severely under dressed. None of them care. 

As they drive home-- Harry swinging around to drop Sarah off at their mom’s place, the drive long but Allie doesn’t mind at all-- he thanks her for the day. “It really meant it a lot,” he tells her, staring straight ahead at the road. She’s staring at him which feels like a bit of a change of pace. “You being so nice to Sarah and everything. She had a lot of fun.”

Allie shrugs. “I had a lot of fun too. It was nothing, honestly.”

As he pulls up to the curb outside her house, she pauses before leaving the car, thinking for a moment. “You know,” she finally starts. “And I’m sorry if this is out of line or something but, you don’t have to be your dad. I know that there’s a lot of stuff that you feel like you need to live up to, some legacy you need to fulfill but,” she pauses, looks over at him. He’s studying her, his eyes flitting around her face. 

“You just need to be you, and maybe that means not working twenty four seven, or maybe that means spending more time with Sarah, I don’t know.”

She’s quiet and he’s quiet too. They stay like that for a moment longer before she opens the car door. “Thanks for the ride, Harry. See you tomorrow?” she asks hesitantly. Maybe she went too far, said too many things that she should’ve kept in her head. She does that sometimes, speaks well before thinking.

But he nods. “Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow, Allie.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


He’s not sure how it’s possible, but he thinks that she might know him better than he knows himself. Fuck. 

Allie Pressman is his friend, and now he’s trying to figure out the next step.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Seeing Harry’s sister prompts her to call her own. 

“Is everything okay?” Cassandra asks, her voice laced with worry. Allie frowns. She feels guilty that their calls are irregular enough to elicit that type of response. This is her fault. She should take her own advice, maybe, not work so much, spend more time with her family. 

“Yeah,” Allie says, playing with a strand of her hair. She’s not sure where to look, the screen or the camera. That part always confused her. She’s complete shit with online meetings. “Just wanted to talk, see how you were doing.”

Cassandra smiles brightly. Her face is just a little blurry, but if Allie squints she can almost pretend like she’s in the same room as her. “Good, really good. I’ve been exploring a little. Prague is really pretty. How about you? How’s filming?” 

“Tiring. I’ve been drinking lots of tea. Black tea just for the caffeine. Harry says I’m addicted. He’s trying to get me to cut down. I think it’s just because I called his coffee order stupid.”

Cass laughs. “Sounds like him.”

“He might be right though. I’ve started associating those stupid sunglasses we wear to pick up the drinks in the morning with caffeine. I don’t think it’s healthy how much I almost enjoy wearing those sunglasses.” Allie doesn’t once think of the implications of her mentioning Harry twice in a barely three minute conversation. Cassandra, however, does.

“The pictures of you two on your infamous coffee runs are all over the internet. So you guys are friends now?”

There’s no pause before her answer. “Yeah, we are.”

It’s not until she’s about to fall asleep that she realises what she said. Her and Harry are friends, no question mark, no hesitation. She likes that. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She isn't prepared for Harry Bingham.
> 
> -
> 
> _or the part where they become best friends and things start to change_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this all kinda happened really fast. don't expect another super speedy update like this again. 
> 
> also, the feedback on the last chapter has been so amazing! thank you all so much for the kind words!
> 
> lyrics at the start are from the Taylor Swift song _Tim Mcgraw_ (maggie rogers did a cover of it that's available on spotify and it's kinda the only thing i've been listening to these past couple of weeks).
> 
> hope you enjoy pt 2!

**PART TWO: the fall**

_think of my head on your chest_

  
  


* * *

  
  


Allie’s second major international press tour is sandwiched between filming for the second and third _New Ham_ films, meant to offer a quick break from set. In all honesty, she actually almost enjoys it.

Her and Harry take to answering questions meant for the other, him speaking at lengths about the diet and exercise regimen he was on while she laughs her way through stories of stunts gone almost wrong. Their publicists take turns glaring at them, but neither her nor Harry really care. 

She’s ready for this press tour more than she was for the first. She’s ready for the exhaustion that sets in after a day of interviews, ready to pass out at the Comic Con after party, ready to answer the same three questions over and over for hours on end. 

And, just like last time, her favorite moments come during those stops where it’s just her and Harry talking in front of a camera.

There’s the _Buzzfeed_ puppy interview, which she enjoys mostly because she gets to hang out with a bunch of puppies. Harry is setting right beside her, their knees pressed together as they talk, both of them holding a puppy in their arms. Harry’s a bit possessive about it, picking a favorite and pulling it away when Allie reaches to pet it.

“What are you afraid of, Bingham?” she asks, scratching a different puppy behind the ears. Both are ignoring the question they’ve just been asked, something about their New Ham character’s weaknesses. “Scared the pup will like me better?” There’s this smirk on her face, one that reminds everyone of him. Later, when their publicts show them the rough cut of the video for approval, even she will note that. It reminds her a bit of high school, really, how quickly they become a like. Only, unlike high school, they’re actually getting along right now.

“More that you’ll scare it away with you ugly face,” he retorts, and she throws her head back laughing, the puppy in her arms wiggling free.

Someone behind the camera clears their throat and both Allie and Harry turn to them, reminded that this is work. The person asks another question just as Allie grabs another puppy.

“The first time we met?” Harry repeats so that the mics will pick it up. Behind the camera, someone nods, not that Harry would have noticed. He’s already looking at Allie. “On a TV set when we were eleven or twelve. I gave her a tour. She didn’t hate me yet.”

Allie grins over at him. “Don’t tell him,” she stage whispers, turning her gaze towards the camera. “But he’s sort of the reason why I got into acting. He was really nice to me that day, didn’t become a complete asshole until later.”

When she turns her gaze back to him, he’s smiling at her, something soft that she’s still not entirely used to. That smile’s been appearing more and more recently. She desperately wants to chalk it up to the press tour, him pretending to like her more than he actually does for the sake of the movie. 

The smile’s gone a second later, though, as the puppy he’s grown attached to escapes from his arms and jumps onto Allie, replaced by a cry of betrayal and some sort of dramatic hurt expression. Allie wishes desperately that that is the moment the internet holds on to. 

_( hallieisreal - omg omg omg he’s the reason she started acting oh my god i am never getting over this #never #ever #they are so cute!_

_newhamismyreligion - harry’s scream when the puppy left is me all of the time_

_TakeMeToNewHam - my heart hurts every time they smile at each other #they are so in love )_

They both enjoy the _Vanity Fair_ lie detector interview too. It’s a nice change of pace, getting strapped into some strange machine and then being told when the other is lying. 

For the fans, her turn being interviewed isn’t nearly as entertaining as his. The questions, all something their management came up with, are relatively boring, the first half of the video only really made entertaining by their mindless chatter.

“Coffee or tea?” he asks her, and she rolls her eyes. 

“You know this-- tea, obviously, I drink it all of the time, but there’s this really annoying co-star of mine who’s trying to get me to cut down because he’s worried about my caffeine intake.”

Harry pulls a look of exaggerated hurt. “Hey, I’m not annoying.”

It’s nice to be on the other side of the table, watching as they wrap wires around Harry’s arms. 

“So,” she starts, staring down at her question sheet, trying to make it look like she’s seen it more than once right before the interview started. “Which movie do you like better, _La La Land_ or _A Star is Born?_ Keep in mind that there is a right answer.”

“ _La La Land_ because Ryan Gosling is in it,” he replies easily, leaning back in her chair. She nods in agreement (she’d already known the answer to this question. They'll sing _City of Stars_ with him sometimes as they walk together back to his trailer).

“Celebrity crush?”

He smirks over at her. For a second, she forgets that there’s a camera recording them-- the look just feels so natural. “Easy. There’s this co-star of mine who I’ve known with really blonde hair, really messy hair. She doesn’t know how to be nice to me, but I guess I’m into that.”

Allie rolls her eyes. _It’s all pretend._ “Wouldn’t call myself a proper celebrity, Bingham,” she shoots back, waiting for the lie detector to go off. It doesn’t.

But when he grins over at her, all casual and easy, and says, “Who says I’m talking about you?”, yeah, that’s when the lie detector goes off. 

The internet seems really attached to this moment.

_( kat &alex4eva - they’re in love #omg they’re *this* close to being canon #so close #just fucking kiss already _

_inlovewithalliepress - Please just put us all out of our misery and date already._

_HarryBinghamFanAccount - the vanity fair interview aka the time harry bingham called allie pressman his celebrity crush and we all simultaneously died )_

And she doesn’t exactly mind the _Glamour_ friendship test interview. It just scares her a bit, how well they already know each other, that’s all. She’d really thought that they weren’t more than just work friends, two people who know the other’s coffee order and favorite snacks, that they know the little things but not the bigger stuff. She’s wrong, obviously, they’ve known each other for too long not to have picked up on things. 

“So I’m supposed to compliment you?” Allie asks, as crew members hand them both clip boards and note cards. She takes a moment, a really long moment, to try to figure out how difficult it’ll be to write while standing up.

Harry nods. “Yep. Shouldn’t be too difficult for you seeing as there’s so many things you can compliment me on.”

Allie scrunches her face up and forces her attention on trying to figure out something to write rather than responding to him with something sharp.

His first compliment comes a moment later, after someone behind the camera says that their time is up. “You have really good music taste.

She grins over at him before turning to the camera and clipping the pen to the clipboard. “We’re trying to figure out if Coachella is worth the hassle.” They’d gotten _this_ close to buying two VIP passes to weekend one, and renting a house out in the desert. Elle had even said that she would go with them, but the dates hadn’t worked out properly, and Allie and Harry had to settle for watching the live stream on their phones between takes. 

“Give me a compliment,” Harry whines, and she rolls her eyes. 

“You have okay taste in coffee,” she says, making eye contact with him. He smiles over at her, and she tries hard not to think about all of the times that she’s stolen a sip of his coffee on set. It’s grown on her, the bitter taste, and he never seems to complain when she takes his to-go cup out of his hand.

“Black, one sugar, one shot of vanilla.”

“Just like your soul.” The last part is an inside joke between the two of them, a throwback to that first week of them stopping by that coffee shop on the way to set. He’d say _just like my soul_ to whatever poor barista was working the morning shift and Allie would never fail to laugh even if just a little. 

It’s his turn again. “You’re good at making the kissing scenes not awkward.”

Her eyebrows furrow and her heart skips a beat. “I don’t know about that one.”

He blinks over at her, suddenly soft. “Just take my word for it.”

She pauses, tries to reset herself and ignore his words. “You have a nice favorite color. Dark green, forest green, which is actually kind of weird seeing as you don’t like the outdoors.”

Harry gasps dramatically, flashing his own card at the camera, as Allie pulls a face as though she’s on _The Office._ “That was my compliment.” She catches a glimpse of the card, reads the words, _pretty favorite color._

“Sunrise orange,” she explains.

Harry nudges her with his clipboard. “Only she doesn’t like waking up early so the only time she really sees it is when we get stuck having morning shoots.” He grins over at her, a bit like they’re co-conspirators or partners in crime. She wants to say something about how the only time Harry really spends outdoors is when they film on location, up in Massachusetts or Georgia. She doesn’t, though, holds her tongue and keeps from giving the internet another excuse to ship the two of them. 

That was pointless, she finds out a moment later, seeing as they have to spend four minutes staring into each other's eyes. 

“You have pretty eyes,” he tells her lightly, casually, like it doesn’t mean anything. It shouldn’t, and she hates the butterflies that appear in her stomach. _It’s all pretend._

“You have nice eyebrows,” she offers, and he shrugs. 

Mostly, the spend the four minutes pulling faces at the other and laughing at the littlest things. Harry points out a pimple on her face, and she punches him on the arm. That reminds her of high school a lot. 

So do the trust falls the _Glamour_ interview ends with.

“Fun fact,” Allie says, turning around so that her back is to Harry. She rolls her eyes at the camera just thinking about the memory. “We played Romeo and Juliet when were were fifteen and sixteen and absolutely hated each other so the director forced us to do trust building exercises like these and Harry--”

“Okay, it was one time,” Harry interrupts, and she can just see his hands moving all over the place as he says the words. God, they’ve been spending so much time together. 

“He let me fall,” she finishes, shaking her head at the camera. 

Behind her, Harry says, “Let me make up for stupid sixteen year old me,” and she bites her lip. There’s no way for her to get out of this. 

Allie sighs. “On three?”

“One… two… three.” He catches her this time, his arms twisting around her shoulders and she sinks down, staring up at him with a smile. They stay like that for a second longer than the probably should, her just a foot above the ground, leaning against him. She swears she sees him lick his lips, but she tries to ignore that, tries to ignore how much she likes the smell of his cologne, how the scent is comforting now, something she almost wishes would rub off on her if she stay still long enough. 

When it’s her turn, she thinks for a moment about letting him fall, treating it as payback for when they were in high school. She doesn’t, though, knows that her publicist would probably kill her, and that Harry’s betrayal face isn’t nearly as cute as he thinks. 

_( halliebinghampressman - i wish allie pressman knew my coffee order_

_katofnewham - OMG Ok first of all, that look on his face when he compliments her eyes, my baby is so in love! And then Allie’s trust fall when she just kinda lays there, like OMG Allie Pressman really is all of us #and then when he licks his lips #i swear i died # like actually died #wtf is he trying to do to us_

_kalex5eva - all i want is for someone to look at me like harry looks at allie #is that too much to ask???? #they are so in love #i ship it )_

Really, Allie’s not lying when she says she likes the press tour. No, not at all. The internet still scares her, though, and she just wishes she could stop herself before hiding her face in his shoulder every time she gets embarrassed. Or how he’s taken to resting a hand on her knee as though they’re two people who are something more than just friends. And she hates how much she likes to breathe in his cologne. Well, maybe not hate…

Just as they’re flying back to Massachusetts to start the on location portion of filming for the third and final _New Ham_ , Harry likes a tweet saying something about how _Allie Pressman probably smells good_. _#hallie_ trends on twitter for the fourth time and tumblr has a field day. She starts to doubt the internet speculation will ever go away.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He tries to convince himself that he’s just flirting with her for the fans. It’s his job to pretend to be in love with Allie Pressman. 

(It’s just.. it’s starting to not feel like a job anymore. That scares the shit out of him.)

Him and Allie are just friends. He should be happy with that.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She likes Harry, really. They’re not rivals anymore, and they’re more than just reluctant co-stars. They’re _friends._ She swears that’s the truth. 

It’s just, when she accepts the role of Anne in _Space Station_ , a role that has the potential to force people to actually take her seriously, a role that will help her shed her star-of-teen-movie-franchise look, she does not at all expect him to be a part of the package. 

She’s just afraid that all she’ll ever be known for is playing Harry Bingham’s love interest.

So, yeah, she’s a little bit upset. Sue her. 

“Welcome to the cast of _Space Station,”_ Harry says brightly as she opens the car door. He’s still driving her to and from set. They’ve even talked a little about him re-teaching her how to drive. He thinks it’s hilarious how bad she is at it.

“Fuck you, Bingham,” she snaps back halfheartedly. God, it’s too early for this. She is not in the mood to be reminded that, at this rate, every single big moment in her career will come with him. She’s not sure she could handle that, friends or not. Maybe they’ve just been spending too much time together recently. Maybe she’s a little afraid that he’ll get sick of her, that they’ll revert back to their younger selves. She’s not sure she could handle that change. 

“Not the tone you need if you want us to be able to pull off Anne and Nolan,” he chides. “They’re light and soft and fall in love almost immediately. They’re barely sharp. I don’t think you can handle that.”

Allie makes a face at him, and he pauses at a stop sign for a moment too long just to make one back. “It’s called acting, Bingham. I’m pretty sure I can handle pretending to be in love with you. I’ve been doing it for years.”

“It’s character driven and the cast is pretty much only us,” he reminds her, and she weighs the pros and cons of just crashing this car right now. Pro - if she does it well enough, he might have to turn down the role. Con - she’ll have to find a new way to work, and Harry Bingham is an ass when he has even the littlest thing to complain about. “We might be friends right now--”

“As of right now we are barely friends,” she interrupts, and he rolls his eyes. 

“You’re literally proving my point, Pressman. We’ll end up killing each other trapped on set with no one else. Or worse, we’ll fuck up this movie, which I know neither of us can afford to do.”

She sighs, hating that he’s right. “What do you propose we do then?” she finally asks, and Harry grins over at her, a second longer than is probably considered safe on the LA freeway.

“Thought you’d never ask, Pressman. I say that we become proper friends who, you know, actually talk outside of work.”

Allie scoffs. “We already talk outside of work,” she argues. It feels a little like she’s arguing just for the sake of arguing. That’s definitely something she’s picked up from him. “We drive to work together. This is us talking outside of work.”

Harry rolls his eyes, and she has to resist the urge to say something about how he needs to focus more on the road. She has no right to complain about anyone’s driving. “I’m driving us to work, Pressman.”

“Fine,” she concedes begrudgingly. “So what exactly does us becoming proper friends involve? Do you want to start grocery shopping with me, or should we just jump straight to romantic candle lit dinners like all of the fans want?”

Harry does not laugh at her very obvious sarcasm. “I was actually thinking I’d call you sometimes, or that we’d have movie nights, or something, but if candle lit dinners are your sort of thing, then I guess I’m down for that too.”

She purses her lips and looks out the window to avoid his gaze. They’re rolling into the lot already, and she wonders how bad it’d hurt to just jump out of the car right now. She could probably even get away with ignoring him for the rest of the day. “You can call me tonight but only after eight, and I’m not talking to you for any longer than twenty minutes. I already have to spend all day with you on set; I’m not talking to you all night too.”

Harry grins again. “Deal.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Harry facetimes her at eight o’clock on the dot. 

“I like seeing your face, Pressman,” he says. “It boosts my ego.”

“God, can you please learn to not talk. Please.”

They talk about the latest episode of _Brooklyn Nine Nine,_ and she only threatens to hang up twice.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It hits him, sometime a little after their fourth facetime call of the week, that he might consider Allie Pressman to be his best friend. 

He’s not quite sure what comes after that, but he still thinks about it a lot.

  
  


* * *

  
  


After a little less than two weeks straight of them talking practically every night (often for longer than twenty minutes), he drags her out to dinner after they’re finished shooting for the day. It’s nearly midnight, but she’s hyped up on the three shots of espresso in that coffee Harry had offered her somewhere around ten to help her stay awake.

“It’s a little late for a candle lit dinner, isn’t it,” she jokes, scared that he’d find a way for them to have one anyway, just to be funny. She’s also scared that the camera will find them, that the paparazzi roam the streets of LA just searching for victims. God, if _#hallie_ trends again she will lose it.

“Stop trying to ruin the surprise, Pressman,” he replies breezily, turning off of the highway. 

“Harry, I swear to god if you--”

He snorts. “You worry too much, Pressman.”

She sighs, slouching in the leather seats. Out the window, the streets are decorated in fairy lights. She’s never been to this part of town before. 

“I’m placing all of my trust in you, Bingham. Don’t screw this up.”

They end up at a pizza place, some small, family owned shop that’s somehow open twenty four hours. The only other people there are half drunk or incredibly hung over, and neither her nor Harry are stopped once for a picture.

The food is good-- the only thing she really misses about New York is the pizza, but this place isn’t bad at all-- and it’s nice to ride out the rest of the caffeine rather than lay in bed for hours. 

“So you’re gonna trust me next time, right Allie,” he says, pulling up in front of her house. She’s rented this place all throughout shooting the _New Ham_ films. She thinks that she’ll miss it once this is all over. 

She laughs. “Oh God no, Harry” she replies, but he’s laughing too, the sound bright and comforting. She thinks that maybe they’re _proper friends_ now.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He didn’t realise how much he liked _Harry_ more than _Bingham_. It just sounds right when she says it.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They finish shooting the _New Ham_ trilogy on a Wednesday. To celebrate, Allie hosts a party at her place. Harry helps her set up, making fun of her relentlessly for the _One Direction_ poster she’d taken from set. 

Standing at the counter, his eyes flitting around her kitchen (he’s never been inside her house, she realises. This should feel more monumental than it actually does), Harry asks, “So let’s say I bought you a cut out of one of the _One Direction_ band members. Who would you want it to be?”

“Oh Niall, definitely,” she replies easily, pouring a bag of chips into one of those fancy crystal bowls her parents bought her when she first started renting the house. Looking around, she doesn't actually have a lot of her own things in her place-- all of the furniture came with the house, all of the knick knacks and books and even some of the dinnerware. It really will be a lot of moving on now that _New Ham_ is over. 

Less than an hour later, after Harry’s forced a house tour out of her, them both discovering a hidden closet at the end of the hall (“How the fuck did you not notice this? You’ve been living here for over two years.” "People don't actually go searching for hidden closets, Bingham."), people start to arrive. There’s Bean and Clark, both of whom were added to the cast midway through the second film. And Helena and Luke, of course, who show up with a cake from that bakery Allie had mentioned once, the one with the killer cupcakes just across the street from the pizza place Harry showed her. They pull Gwen and Erika in with them along with a few other cast members that Allie always wished she’d gotten to know better. 

Elle is there too, a full glass of red wine, laughing at a story Helena’s telling.

Allie tries not to think too hard about how they’ll all never be as close as they are right now. She tries to remind herself that they still have press and the premier before it’s properly over. She tries to think about how this is good, how everything has to end eventually. 

Midway through the night, after everyone is properly relaxed and comfortable, Allie stands on a chair, raising her glass for a toast. 

“I just want to say,” she starts, resting an arm on Harry’s head to balance herself. She thinks it’s progress, him not immediately trying to trip her up. “That I’ve had the time of my life working with all of you.” Gwen lets out a little cheer at her words, and Clark starts clapping, everyone else joining in a moment later. Allie’s smiling so wide it just about hurts as Harry helps her back to the ground. 

“God, Pressman, when’d you get so sappy?” he jokes, still pressed close to her side. She moves to sit on the sofa and he moves with her, pulling a bowl of cheetos in his lap. She wonders when he learned that they were her favorite. 

“About two glasses of wine ago, actually.”

“Well you’re not getting rid of me that easily,” he says, nudging her in the side with his elbow. 

She sighs dramatically. “Yeah, I know. _Space Station.”_

“I actually meant the Met Gala,” he clarifies, and she pulls a face, remembering suddenly that they’re going to that together this year. 

“God, don’t remind me. I have to get up at six on Saturday for my fitting.”

He laughs, says something along the lines of “Oh poor you,” and she punches him lightly on the arm.

Later, Harry’s the last person to leave, lingering even as Luke and Helena drive away. They the rest of the cake straight out of the box, fighting over the last bite. And when she’s starting to fall asleep on her feet, he stands up, pulling her in for a hug. 

“See you soon, Allie,” he says, quiet and soft. She lets herself linger, sinks in a little. He still wears the same cologne. She hates how attached she’s grown to the scent. 

“See you soon, Harry.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


He hugs her for a second longer than he probably should. Her hair still smells the same. He knows exactly how he feels.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Harry has an arm wrapped tight around her waist, catching her every time she trips on her heels or the edge of her dress. The cameras are bright, the lights flashing, people yelling at everyone. She was here last year, came as a guest of a brand, but it felt so much more low-key. She’s more famous now, and Harry’s here with her, which probably makes a difference too. 

“God,” he whispers into her ear. Their publicists are right beside them, leading them towards the interviewers are the entrance to the museum. “Do these stairs ever end?”

She pulls a face, shifting to make sure no cameras can catch the look. “Try doing it in heels. I think my feet are going to fall off.”

Their publicists push them towards Becca Gelb once they reach the top of the steps. Becca’s been interviewing people for years now and has an investigative web series that Allie’s currently very much obsessed with. Her and Harry watch it together, him dropping by her house with microwave popcorn and sour patch kids. He always lets her have the blue one which means more to her than it probably should. 

“Hey,” Becca says, waving at them. Distantly, Allie registers a camera turning to point at them. Harry still has an arm wrapped firmly around her waist. “You guys look really good tonight,” she comments, looking the two of them up and down. The theme is _Celestial Bodies_ , and Allie’s dressed like a star, sparkly and bright and tinged silver. Harry’s the night sky, a deep midnight blue with specks of glitter. It’s a couples costume, but neither of them point that out. Instead Allie points out that Harry will be finding glitter everywhere for forever after this.

“Thank you! So do you,” Allie gushes. Harry’s untangling a strand of her hair from the headpiece she’s wearing. Becca laughs when she notices. 

“The outfits get crazy, huh?” Becca says. “So how are you guys enjoying this year's Met Gala so far?”

Allie smiles. “I can’t really move much in this dress, but yeah, this might already be the best night of my life.”

Harry turns to face her, all smiles, so soft and light that it’s her immediate focus. “Why, Pressman, because I’m your date?”

She makes a face at him. “No. It’s because we got to see Rhianna in person.”

Becca laughs again, and Allie returns her focus to the reporter. “God, Rhianna really is the highlight of the Met, huh.”

“And getting to meet you too,” Allie adds, smiling sincerely. “Harry and I are hooked on your show.”

“It’s all we’ve been able to talk about for the past few weeks.”

Becca smiles at both of them. “Means a lot coming from two of the biggest rising stars in Hollywood. Hope you guys enjoy tonight.”

“You too,” they say together, stepping back towards the photographers. The press is shouting all sorts of things at her and Harry-- for them to turn one way and then another-- asking all sorts of questions. When she hears someone yell _are you dating_ louder than the rest, she shakes her head just barely. 

But, a second later, when there’s a photographer telling her to kiss his cheek, she does it without thinking. He’s still holding her tight, refusing to let go. She’s grateful. 

They head inside after that. They’ll eat food and take a forbidden mirror selfie. They’ll be attached at the hip the entire night. 

Not once will Allie think about how safe she feels beside him. It’s normal now, as normal as the stars in the night sky. She won't think about that either.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Sharing a slice of chocolate cake inside the Met, he realises he never wants the night to end. They’ve been together the entire night, side by side no matter what. People notice, they must, but no one says anything out right.

And when she kisses him on the cheek, twice that night, once on the steps, again, slightly wine drunk, on the way home, he thinks that he’ll never be able to forget how it feels, her lips against his skin.

He’s not sure if _pretend_ is enough for him anymore.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_halliebinghampressman - they went to the met gala together. she kissed his cheek. i died_

_katpressman - idc what allie pressman says. those two are dating_

_HallieInNewHam - let’s all take a deep breath and NOT look at all of the pictures where harry bingham looks at allie pressman like she hung the stars in the sky #im kidding pls look at the pictures #fuck they’re in love #and also really playing with my heart_

  
  


* * *

  
  


Filming for _Space Station_ doesn’t start until mid January, so she has a few projects lined up to kill the time. Currently she’s filming a romantic comedy up in Toronto, and she can’t believe how weird she finds it, spending time on set without Harry. The studio drives her to and from set. That makes her miss him even more.

They continue to facetime often. 

“You need to learn how to drive,” he teases, adjusting his glasses (he wears glasses and still looks hot and she might hate him for it) and shooting her an easy grin. He’s not filming anything right now, instead working on furnishing his new house in the Hills. She’s working with Sarah to try to convince him not to buy a plaid armchair. 

“I already know how to drive. I’m just not very good at it.” Once, right after they’d started shooting the third New Ham film, he’d let her drive his expensive sports car around an empty parking lot. She’d still nearly crashed. Harry had thought it was hilarious, though, mentioning his brush with death to anyone who’d listen.

He rolls his eyes. “I’ll teach you how to actually drive once you get back to LA.”

She grins at the screen, trying desperately to ignore how happy talking to him makes her feel. “Only if you let me drive your new Tesla.”

"Deal."

She wonders when exactly Harry Bingham became her best friend. She’s not sure. She’s still proud of how far they’ve come.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They walk the red carpet of the final _New Ham_ film with the rest of the cast, but slip out early to get _In-N-Out._

“I sorta miss seeing you all of the time, Pressman,” he admits to her as they share an order of fries, their burgers already gone. “It’s weird.”

“Yeah,” she agrees softly. “Never thought that would happen.”

He laughs. “Me either.”

He drives them back to his house, giving her a tour. She makes fun of his plaid armchair (“I can’t believe you bought that.” “Can’t lie, Pressman, it was mostly just to spite you.”), and they watch the Christmas episodes of _The Office_ on his big TV. 

She likes hanging out with him in person, can almost pretend that they’re still working together, that she’ll leave for her place and then he’ll be there in the morning to pick her up. That was her life for so long. She needs to move on.

“It’s getting late,” she comments, standing up from the couch. He stands with her. “I should probably get going.”

“You can stay here for the night,” he says, and it’d maybe sound casual if she didn’t know him so well.

She pauses, takes a deep breath, steadies herself. “My flight back to Toronto is pretty early tomorrow and all of my stuff is back at the hotel.”

“I can drive you back?” he offers, and she shakes her head. 

“It’s late. I can get Uber. I should probably be trying to get my rating back up anyways.”

He stares at her, and, for a second, she thinks that he’s going to try to argue with her. Instead, he takes steps forward, holding out his arms, and she steps into them without even really thinking. Maybe they can have that, maybe that’s where they draw the line. 

“It was good to see you,” he says into her hair, and she smiles, breathes in his cologne. It’s the same as always.

“You too, Harry.”

The fluttering in her heart, the butterflies set deep in her stomach, scare her a bit. She’s only just getting used to them being best friends. She’s not sure she’s willing to ruin that for a chance at something more, not right now.

She likes how things are.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He worries when he realises that he can’t imagine his life without her.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Her parents are spending the holidays on some cruise, and Cassandra is staying in Europe, celebrating with her new boyfriend, Gordie, who Allie is still yet to meet. She’s prepared herself for a Christmas spent alone, to watch _Love, Actually,_ drink too much wine, and do an insane amount of online shopping.

She is not prepared for Harry Bingham.

“You can stay at my place, if you want,” he offers when she first mentions spending Christmas alone. “Sarah’s going to the Bahamas with a friend's family, and I doubt my mom will be taking any time off work.”

She’s silent, biting the inside of her lip, thinking. He continues. “Come on, Pressman. We both know that all you’ll be doing otherwise is watching _Love, Actually_ on a loop.” She wants to hate how well he knows her. She can’t. “Who knows, I might even get you a gift.”

She really shouldn’t say yes. _Space Station_ starts filming in a month, and she really can’t afford to be feeling things for her co-star. They can’t afford to fuck this up.

But, God, he gives her that smile, all bright and easy and nervous, and she can’t say no him. She just can’t do it.

“Okay.” In her head, it feels a bit like defeat, but her voice sounds happy. She doesn’t know which to trust. “I’ll pack my bags and book a flight.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


He knows how to spend Christmas alone; he’s been doing it for years. But when she mentions her plans, he doesn’t think twice before inviting her to spend the holidays with him.

God, he’d do anything for an excuse to spend time with Allie Pressman.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She flies in from New York a week before Christmas. He picks her up from the airport, and she thinks faintly that there’s not much more comforting to her than sitting beside him in a car.

“Did you miss me?” she asks, pulling the seat belt across her chest. Once, way back when, they’d watched bits of _Sherlock_ together. He’d made fun of her obsession with Benedict Cumberbatch’s cheekbones. It registers now as something that might’ve been jealousy. 

“More than I’d care to admit.” His words make her stomach do flip flops. She’s not sure how to feel.

She takes a deep breath, tries to shift the mood. “So did you finally get rid of that chair because I wasn’t kidding when I said that I wouldn’t step foot in the house if it was still there.”

Harry makes a face out onto the road. “Sarah 'accidentally' set it on fire.”

Allie snorts. “She really is reaffirming her place as my favorite Bingham. Don’t know what I would do without her.”

“It was a comfortable chair,” he whines, and she rolls her eyes. 

“Harry that chair was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen.”

 _“Harry that chair was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen,”_ he repeats mockingly, and she spits out a laugh. Yeah, she definitely missed him too. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


He’s not sure when, but he’s come to terms with the smile that never leaves his face when she’s around. He’s come to terms with the lightness in his heart and the butterflies in his stomach and the feeling of laughing so hard it hurts.

He’s falling for Allie Pressman, and he’s okay with that.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Harry takes her bags upstairs to a bedroom with large windows facing the brightest parts of LA. There’s a single plaid pillow on the bed, and she throws it at him the second she sees it.

“You’re such an ass, Harry,” she says, but her tone is too light for it to be anything but a joke. 

“Dinner will be ready at six,” he tells her as he steps out of the room, tossing the pillow back in her direction. She briefly considers throwing the miniature Christmas tree (yes, Harry Bingham is the type of person to put a Christmas tree (albeit usually fake) in every room. There may or may not be two in his bathroom) that sits on the desk at the back of his head. She decides against it because even spite can’t help her shitty aim.

Instead, she lays back on the bed and tries to take a deep breath. Here she is, Allie Pressman, in Harry Bingham’s guest bedroom about to spend Christmas with him alone. God, the internet would have a field day if they knew this. 

She spends the time before dinner unpacking and trying to figure out how long exactly she should stay. New Years feels like too much, but leaving the day after Christmas feels rude (she does not think about the implications of the fact that she now cares about whether or not she’s rude to him). By 5:50, she still doesn’t have an answer, so she heads downstairs. And there he is. Cooking.

Honestly, she thought that everyone lived like her-- purely on take-out and pre-planned meals from her trainer depending on what exactly whatever role she’s playing involves. But Harry, nope, he’s actually cooking. 

“Early just like usual, Pressman,” he says, stirring something in a pot. She wonders if this is all some elaborate plot to poison her, and makes a mental note to watch him take the first bite. 

She stares at him for a moment too long before finally asking, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

He points at a cheese grater and a block of Parmesan. "Could you grate about a cup of that into a bowl?" 

She nods and tries desperately to ignore how domestic all of this feels. She fails. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


They’re cooking together in his kitchen. He wants this to be his forever. Fuck.

  
  


* * *

  
  


A list of Christmas related activities she and Harry partake in.

Ice skating. They drive out to a holiday rink in Santa Monica, waiting over an hour before getting in. He holds her hand the entire time they skate, dropping it only when someone asks for a picture. She doesn’t go on twitter that night, but she’s sure that people are freaking out.

Baking Christmas cookies. She accidentally burns an entire tray, and Harry’s are all a little raw. They salvage the ones they can and cover them in green frosting. 

Decorating. Most of his house is already decorated (see Christmas tree in every room), but the main tree out in the living room is still bare when she arrives. They take turns throwing tinsel at it, and struggle for a half hour to untangle the Christmas lights. He even lets her put the star on the top of the tree, reaching behind her just barely to adjust it.

Mock Justin Bieber’s holiday album. Even Harry’s mocking singing voice sounds nice. She hates that.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It’s just barely Christmas Eve still, and they’re watching _It’s a Wonderful Life_ , still full cups of Eggnog (God, that shit is disgusting) on the coffee table in front of them.

She watches the movie every year, has for as long as she can remember. She used to hate it, used to force it down before bed like medicine. Now, though, she kind of likes it. She likes how familiar it feels, how she can practically recite entire scenes from memory, how she knows exactly what’s going on at any given moment. She likes how it reminds her of being a kid.

Beside her, on the couch, Harry shifts. “Christmas was my dad's favorite holiday,” he reveals just as Mary and George fall in love on screen. “He’d always put it into contracts that he couldn’t work for that entire week. It didn’t usually pan out, though, and he’d only really be home on the twenty fourth and twenty fifth.” He pauses, and Allie turns away from the television. It’s just background noise now. “You were right about me needing to not work twenty four seven. It’s been really nice to have a break.”

The room suddenly feels like it’s closing in on her. This feels too personal. There are no cameras around, no way for her to act like this is pretend.

She swallows. “You didn’t take a proper break, though,” she finally says, her tone light, and her words soft. He’d opened up to her, even if it was small. She hates that she can’t get herself to do the same. (There was that one Christmas that she spent with Cass at the hospital, the two in a row that she spent alone with her grandparents. She could tell him about the year her parents were too busy with work to decorate the tree with them, or the year that she herself had worked all the way through the holiday, watching _It’s a Wonderful Life_ on her phone between takes.)

He scoffs, and her chance is gone. The air feels light again. “That movie I did doesn’t count.”

“Doesn’t count,” she repeats, an eyebrow raised and a smile on her face.

“We both know that I had to do that movie. The script was hilarious. You saw it, you know that,” he says, all quick and bright. Vividly, she can remember the facetime call in which he told her about the film. She remembers him inviting her to the premiere, too, and how she couldn’t make it. She was shooting something in London at the time, and had felt horrible about missing it.

“I’m sorry about that,” she says softly, and his head tilts to the side.

“About what?”

“About not being able to make it to the premiere.”

Harry shrugs it off. “It’s fine. You were busy.”

She shakes her head. “No it’s not. You’re my best friend,” she says slowly, almost like it’s to herself. They don’t really say stuff like that to each other. Sometimes it’s like she forgets that they’re not fifteen anymore. “I should’ve found the time.”

Harry stares at her, soft, like it means everything, what she’s saying. “You’re my best friend too, Allie.”

She takes a deep breath in and turns back to the TV, trying to force it back into focus. George is rebuking Potter’s offer. Beside her, Harry shifts again.

“It’s nearly midnight. You want your present?” he asks, but it doesn’t seem to matter much what, whatever she says, because he’s already standing up.

“Sure. I’ll go grab yours too,” she says anyway, running up the stairs to the guest room and grabbing a gift bag from the far end of the closet. A part of her had thought that Harry’d go searching for it. He’d never been one for surprises. 

Back downstairs, Harry’s already waiting. He looks nervous, but she tries not to pay any attention to that, scared of what it could mean.

“You open yours first,” he says, forcing a box wrapped in textured silver wrapping paper in her hands. It looks fancy, and she has to resist the urge to shake it. 

“God, Bingham, did you wrap this yourself?”

He laughs. He still sounds nervous, but maybe a little less now. “Nah, they wrapped it for me when I bought it. Now open it already. I want to see what you got me.”

She rolls her eyes and begins to peel back the wrapping paper carefully, picking at the tape. This is how Cassandra always opens gifts. She likes to save the wrapping paper. Allie thinks that she might want to start doing that now too. 

And it’s a nondescript black box that she finds, setting the paper down on the table. When she opens the box, she finds a thin gold necklace with a single pearl in the middle. 

It doesn’t feel like the type of gift that they’d usually give one another. She still loves it.

She looks up from the necklace to offer Harry a soft smile. “Help me put it on?”

He grins back, his cheeks tinged a light pink. “Sure. You like it?”

“Yeah. It’s beautiful.” There’s no hesitation before her words. _It’s a Wonderful Life_ is still playing in the background, a bit like nothing more than just a piece to their setting.

“Good.” His fingers don’t fumble with the clasp like she knows hers would. “I saw it in the window of some jewelry store on Melrose and thought of you.”

She ignores the butterflies in her stomach and holds the gift bag out to him. The pearl is cold against her neck. She likes it. And it’s funny, how he grabs the bag from her, pulling out the tissue paper and throwing it behind him dramatically as she laughs. 

"Prada sunglasses? You're getting fancy, Pressman."

Allie shrugs. "Thought I'd feed your obsession," she jokes as he puts them on. (He can almost make wearing sunglasses inside seem cool. She hates him.) 

"Thanks."

Behind them, on the TV, an angel is getting its wings just as Harry pulls her close and hugs her tight. He turns his head and his nose brushes against her cheek. Allie tries to imagine a camera in front of them. 

She can't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked this! please tell me what you think down below, comments mean the absolute world to me!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They don’t talk about the future.
> 
> -
> 
> _or the part where they kinda live together_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit of a shorter chapter than usual. lots of pining in this one. like lots. all they do is pine.
> 
> the feedback for the last two parts has been so amazing! I love reading through all the comments!
> 
> the song both featured at the beginning and somewhere within the chapter is The Cure's 'Just Like Heaven'.
> 
> really hope you enjoy!

**PART THREE: the ascent**

_you’re just like a dream_

  
  


* * *

  
  


Allie makes plans to leave on December twenty-seventh, her bags all packed and a plane ticket booked. And then Sarah Bingham shows up on Harry’s doorstep with a bright smile and a faded sunburn, and suddenly Allie’s staying through New Years.

She’s not upset about it. 

Look, she’s friends with Harry, and sure, maybe they’re getting a little close to the line, riding it. Maybe sometimes it feels like they’re about to crash, fuck up everything that they’ve worked for. But… 

She tells herself that she’s staying in LA because Sarah asked her too, not because she wants to spend time with Harry. She tells herself that it’s because she’s just started to learn the in’s and out’s of his house, that creaky third step, where to put the silverware, the toilet handle that always needs to be jiggled. She has a favorite mug and a spot on the couch, and she _just_ figured out how to work his remote.

She tells herself that it’s _normal,_ wanting to spend time with a friend. And it is. (What’s not normal is how she’s starting to feel about him. No, that’s not normal at all.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


“You two are like hermits,” Sarah comments, shaking her head at Harry and Allie. They’re on the couch, three episodes into their _Community_ binge. Both ignore her. “We’re going out today. I’m sick of hearing you--” she throws a plaid pillow at Harry. “Make fun of Allie for her _Postmates_ addiction. And I’m sick of you--” another plaid pillow is thrown, hitting Allie squarely in the face. “Ordering so much on _Postmates.”_

They end up on Melrose eating overly expensive Italian food while paparazzi camp outside. Sarah doesn’t seem to mind, though, and Harry and Allie are used to it by now. 

“Switch sunglasses with me,” Sarah says, tossing Harry a red pair with lenses shaped like hearts. 

He laughs, putting them on, and Allie hates how her heart skips a beat. “Why?”

“To mess with the paparazzi. I’m going to hold Allie’s hand and pretend I’m you.”

Allie snorts water out of her nose as Sarah says that, and Harry has to hand her a napkin. “I’m down,” she finally says, wiping at her face. Harry’s laughing at her, practically doubled over, and it takes all she has not to try to push him out of his chair.

Later, Harry still wearing the heart shaped sunglasses, they buy matching Hawaiian shirts and bucket hats and pretend to be tourists out in front of the Chinese Theater. Sarah asks someone to take a picture of the three of them. She posts it on Twitter and Allie retweets it almost immediately. 

Looking at it, she wonders when she’s ever been more happy. She can’t come up with a moment.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_halliebingham - she’s hanging out with him and his sister! aaaah!!!! #i mean #hanging out with the family is kinda serious #oof_

_KalexInNewHam - They’re wearing matching Hawiian shirts. You cannot tell me they’re not a couple. #or a couple of losers in denial #also #is it sad that i actually really like the shirts? #like, allie pressman really makes it work_

_harrybinghamishot - idky harry doesn’t only wear heart shaped sunglasses_

_katxalex - just over here trying not to imagine allie and harry spending the holidays together #don’t mind me #currently have a mental breakdown #god they’re just so cute_

  
  


* * *

  
  


She leaves on the second of January for her tiny New York apartment with it’s catalogue furniture. Everything’s perfect and clean and decidedly not like her. She doesn’t even bother unpacking her bags, knows that she’ll be off shooting _Space Station_ soon.

Images of Harry’s kitchen float around in the back of her mind as she orders takeout.

She hasn’t taken off the pearl necklace since he gave it to her. She’ll rub it when she’s nervous. She thinks that she might be obsessed with him.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“You really like her, huh?” Sarah says, sitting down beside him on the couch. It feels quieter with just the two of them. 

“Excuse me?” Yep, denial. Pretend. He’s good at that.

Sarah rolls her eyes. He doesn’t doubt for a second that she sees right through him. “Allie. You really like her.”

“Well obviously. She’s my best friend,” he replies, trying so desperately to sound casual. He can’t even look Sarah in the eye, instead focusing on a faraway spot on the wall.

Sarah sighs, tilting her head just barely to the side. “You don’t look at her like she’s just your best friend, Harry.”

Harry pales. He’s been discovered. It’s one thing all in his head. It feels safe there, almost like it’s not real. But out loud… it feels wrong to hear it said, wrong for it to be anything more than just a secret he shares with the internet. 

“It’s my job to act like I’m in love with her,” he finally says, and Sarah shakes her head. 

“It’s not your job when there aren’t any cameras around.”

He hates that she’s right.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He picks her up from her new LA apartment the morning of the table read. She knows for a fact that it’s a half hour out of his way, but neither brings it up. (And she ignores that flutter she gets deep in her chest when he buzzes in because that doesn’t need to be brought up either.)

Walking into the studio, he reaches out and grabs her hand. They’re right on the line, and she tells herself that that’s okay. Faintly, though, it registers that she can’t afford to get much closer to Harry Bingham. 

She worries that the second it’s not pretend everything will go wrong but still squeezes his when he squeezes hers.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She’s never done a film as emotionally and physically draining as _Space Station._ It takes everything out of her, leaves her crawling home at the end of the day, and restless at night. It’s hours and hours spent in front of a green screen imagining a dark expanse of nothing, trying to act weightless as wires cut into her side. 

But it’s a love story, too, a movie about finding the perfect person only to lose them again and again, partly to a mystery and partly to the world.

She starts having trouble sleeping, starts to feel like the bright studio lights won’t ever fade away to something softer, starts to feel like the world is closing in on her. Her morning tea becomes a double shot espresso. Harry starts to get worried.

Sometimes, she thinks that she wouldn't be able to do this without him, without the promise that there’s someone right there who at least partly knows what she’s feeling.

So in his car, as he pulls into her apartment’s underground parking lot, she asks, “You wanna come up with me? Maybe watch a movie or something? It’s still pretty early.” And it’s because she can’t be alone, not right now, not after the day of filming that they’d just gone through (he’d died, right in front of her, three times, over and over. And it’d felt real, even if only for a moment. It’d felt real and… ) She thinks that he doesn’t want to be alone either.

Harry says _sure_ and they order takeout from the Chinese place they both like, and watch _La La Land_ and fall asleep on her couch. When she wakes up, the sun is streaming in through the windows, and her head is on his chest. She can hear his heartbeat, soft and steady. 

Maybe they shouldn’t do this, maybe this is them crossing the line. Maybe she should brace for the moment it all falls apart right now, prepare. Maybe she should take a step back. It’s just… she can’t, no, not when this is the first time in weeks, literal weeks, that she’s gotten a full nights sleep.

So her eyes are closed again when he stirs, a light yawn that almost feels normal. When she looks over at him, he’s staring, his eyes flitting up and down her face like he can’t believe she’s actually there. 

“G’morning,” he finally says, stretching his arms. She sits up. It she tries hard enough, it can almost feel like he’s just picking her up to drive to set.

Maybe that’s how they should treat all of this, like it’s normal. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work.

“Good morning,” she replies softly, nervously, and he smiles back at her like where they are is nothing. Yeah, maybe that is how they should treat this.

Harry makes her breakfast, scrambled eggs and toast. That weird flutter in her chest returns, the one that feels a bit like betrayal, returns, and she forces herself to make a promise that this will _never_ happen again.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She breaks that promise two days later, and _never_ turns into _just one more time_ which turns into a week straight of them waking up tangled on her couch which in turn becomes her bed because Harry’s back starts hurting and she starts to realise that she just can’t seem to fall asleep without her beside him. 

She tells herself that whatever’s going on is totally platonic, that nothing actually happens so it doesn’t really count as crossing a line. 

All of that is a lie.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Very suddenly, Allie Pressman is the first thing he sees in the morning and the last thing he sees at night. 

He could get used to this.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They grocery shop together.

It makes sense, okay? He’s practically living with her. They’re pretty much roommates. And she’s decided it’s for convenience, this whole living situation; her apartment is closer to set than his house is. They’re doing this to save the environment. 

They both wear those stupid sunglasses that she is oddly attached to now and go out in public and buy food. They make grocery lists and have favorite brands (there’s a fight over laundry detergent at some point that ends up in the tabloids. It’s not pretty) and know the other’s comfort foods.

They’re just roommates, that’s all. They’re roommates for the shoot, and the second it’s over he’ll go back to his fancy house in the Hills, and she’ll go back to working herself half to death. It’ll be fine. 

And _roommates,_ roommates is a purely platonic word, just like their current situation. (There’s a lie in there somewhere. If she searched, she’d probably find it pretty easily. She doesn’t search.)

They don’t tell anyone else about what’s going on. That’s like an unspoken rule; people don’t need to know. It’s already common knowledge that he drives her to set every morning, and that part doesn’t change. For a little while, just at the start, she worries about when the cameras will find them. Then, though, she realises she doesn’t care because _they’re not doing anything._ The cameras can find them and the internet can make assumptions, and she won’t care. _They’re just friends._

(There’s a lie somewhere in there too. She doesn’t search.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


It’s mostly a joke, when she first mentions photography to him. He’s editing a photo on _Lightroom_ on his phone between takes, a photo of a green-screen with wires hanging down, and she’s tired because it’s late, and she thinks that it might be funny, telling him to buy a fancy camera to take pictures of her with. 

She didn't think that he’d actually do it.

His Instagram becomes full of digitized film pictures of everything they see around them on a daily basis-- sound and lighting equipment, rows of trailers, make-up bags, costume racks, craft services, takeout containers. And pictures of her, too. Lots of pictures of her, her hair half in her face, her hand held out, mid-way through a laugh, an easy smile. 

Never before has a camera made her stomach do back-flips. 

“I swear, I’ll break that thing if you don’t get that out of my face,” she snaps at him, leaning forward slightly, her hands gripping the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles are white. He’s trying to re-teach her how to drive, and she thinks that he’s doing a pretty shitty job, ignoring her pleas for help and instead taking pictures of her. ("I like capturing people in crisis, Pressman.")

He grins, bright enough that it's almost focused in her periphery. “You’ll break it anyway when you crash,” he says wryly. “Turn here, I want a coffee.”

She makes some sort of strangled sound, and he laughs, reaching to adjust the steering wheel on her turn. God, she's a safety hazard, really. She should toss her driver's license out before they have a chance to take it from her. 

“I’ll pay for your tea if you parallel park,” he jokes. She’d roll her eyes if she wasn’t afraid of looking away from the road. He’d have to hold the cup while she drank from it, and she doubts she can trust him since just last week she purposefully spilled his coffee everywhere because of an argument they’d gotten into over _Harry Potter_ houses. This asshole was trying to tell her that he wasn’t a _Slytherin._

“I’m not paying when I end up denting someone else's car trying to park” she warns him, and he laughs again, the camera clicking again when she smiles. 

“I’m not worried. I have good insurance.”

Eventually, she finds an open spot outside of their new favorite coffee shop. Harry pushes a pair of sunglasses onto her face while her hands are still firmly gripping the steering wheel. The camera clicks one final time before they both step out. 

“I’m not driving home,” she says with as much finality as she can muster, tossing the keys at him.

He catches them easily, moving to nudge her in the side while they walk towards the shop. Someone nearby stops and whispers. She doesn’t care. 

“Wondering if we should just start over with you, Pressman,” he teases. “Maybe find an empty parking lot and set up some cones. Ooh, or buy one of those cars with a brake on the passenger side. That’d be fun.”

“Or you could just drive me everywhere,” she proposes, and he raises his eyebrows. 

“So you plan on keeping me around?”

She doesn’t pause, though she should probably think a little more before she speaks. “Yeah, yeah I do, Bingham.”

He smiles over at her, so soft that her breath catches in her throat. She reaches to rub the pearl. “Good.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Later, they go back to her apartment and watch whatever’s on TV. Allie won’t think about the fact that he has three pairs of shoes on the rack by her door, that the hoodies on the chair in the bedroom are all his, or that the button down she’s wearing isn’t her. 

She probably should.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The top two drawers in her dresser are his. He fills one entirely of things he knows she likes to steal.

And the pictures, the ones framed all around her apartment, are all taken by him. They’re everywhere, in frames from the vintage shop a block away. They got a table there too. He wonders if she realises that he paid for it.

He discovers that she likes to always have a pint of ice cream in the freezer, that she’ll leave the TV on low in the background while she reads scripts, that she can’t cook for shit but will do anything she can to help, that she likes to blast the AC as an excuse to wear sweaters.

Sometimes he forgets that he had a life before all of this.

They’ll share dinner at the kitchen counter, dessert on the couch, falling asleep pressed close in the same bed.

They won’t talk about the future.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The movie they’re making is going to change things for both of them, she knows it. She still has a hard time imagining life after all of this is over, though.

She’s not used to that, the future being a blur. She’s used to a clear next step. She’s used to knowing what to do.

When she thinks of the future, all she can really see is Harry’s face somewhere off in the distance. She’s not sure what that means. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


They’ve gotten into the habit of listening to the same song over and over again until they’re sick of it. So it’s the night before her birthday and they’re dancing to _Just Like Heaven_ in her-- _their?--_ kitchen. 

It’s nearly midnight, the lyrics _‘show me how you do it and I’ll promise you, I’ll promise that I’ll run away with you, I’ll run away with you’_ are playing for the fifth time. Harry’s grabbed her hands, and she swings her hair back and forth until it feels like a halo, until his grin is bright enough to draw her attention. She grins back.

 _… daylight licked me into shape. I must’ve been asleep for days…_ he twirls her around, and she laughs so hard it hurts. She’s happy. 

And Allie’s singing along now, loudly at first, waiting for him to join in, but softer when she catches his stare. _“You,”_ she sings. _“Soft and lonely. You, just like heaven.”_ He doesn’t stop staring at her, curiously, blatantly fixated. She stares back.

“I love you,” he says softly, just as the song fades out. They say that all the time, I _love you,_ mostly as a joke, pairing it with saving the last cookie, or holding the door open. They throw around casually, easily, a bit like it’s nothing. She likes that.

So she laughs. “I know. I love you too.” And it should be as simple as that, only his features stay soft, and suddenly Allie’s not sure where this is going. She’s getting a little scared.

Harry shakes his head, and she desperately wants to break eye contact. Can’t, for some reason, even though the line between them is practically visible. It’s right next to them. She wonders if he’s already crossed it. “No, Allie,” he says, and the pearl that’s resting above her collar bone suddenly feels heavy. _“I love you.”_

The song starts up again, loud. Loud loud loud. God, she wishes that her-- _their?_ (she really doesn’t know the answer. She wishes she knew)-- neighbors would come by and ask them to quiet down. And she wishes that the music was even louder too, that it’d drown everything out until she could just forget what he said. Until she could forget what he meant.

He must sense that… _spinning on the dizzy edge…_ because his smile, though still here, dampens. He swallows. “It’s almost midnight. You want your present?”

She nods, hesitant with her own smile. The song is still on, _‘soft and lonely’_ or whatever the lyrics are, echoing in the background, and over and over again in her head too. “Sure.”

He steps away from her, pulling his hands away from hers-- she hadn’t even realised she was still holding them-- and opening the spice cabinet. She laughs and watches as the corners of his mouth rise with the sound.

“Hid it the only place I knew you wouldn’t look,” he teases, holding a box tied shut with a blue ribbon out to her. They both stare at it. “It’s not much,” he says nervously, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.

She shrugs. “It doesn’t need to be much.”

“I have another gift for you, but it’s for your party tomorrow.”

She plays with the ribbon. The color reminds her of the suit he’d worn to the Met Gala. “Two gifts? When did you get so generous, Bingham?”

He laughs, still nervous. The song is gone now. She wonders when he turned it off. “Just open it, yeah?”

She unties the ribbon, laying it on the counter beside them. She wants to keep it with the silver wrapping paper from Christmas, hidden in plain sight on a shelf near the TV. In one careful motion, she opens the box, pushing aside the tissue paper with a shaking hand. She wonders if he notices she’s shaking. He must.

Inside the box, underneath the tissue paper, there’s a script bearing a familiar name. She exhales and smiles. 

“Where’d you get this?”

“Kept it.” His hand hoovers over hers. She wishes she could stop shaking. “Flip to that one scene.”

And then there it is, the scene she acted out with him when she was eleven and he was twelve. It’s highlighted in bright pink, and she remembers, vividly, them highlighting it together. She’d drawn a heart on her hand and a star on his. It’d felt like the start.

She sets the script back in the box, laying the ribbon on top of it, before wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him close again. “Thanks Harry.”

She can smell his cologne. She wonders if the scent ever went away, or if her whole apartment just smells like him now. “Happy birthday, Allie.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


He tells her he loves her.

She doesn’t say anything back.

He wonders if _pretend_ is all he’s ever going to get.

(He still wakes up with her in his arms. He lets himself have that.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


Her birthday party is the next day at her parents house. Harry drives them there, and there’s no talk of the whispered _‘I love you’._ She can almost pretend it didn’t happen, that it was all in her head.

She’s never really liked birthdays, so she focuses on that instead, focuses on how to handle that spotlight it casts. Sitting is his car, as they turn onto her parents street, she’s playing with a pair of his sunglasses. He tells her that the party _will be fun._

She believes him.

Cassandra greets them at the entrance, rushing out to the car and pulling Allie in for a hug the second she’s out of the car. Harry’s watching, staring, as Cassandra says, “I’ve missed you.” It’s soft enough to make Allie want to cry.

“I’ve missed you too, Cass.”

Cassandra pulls away, shooting a half smile over at Harry. “Good to see you, Bingham.”

He smiles back. It looks sincere. Allie thinks back to the fights her sister and Harry would get into at twelve. God, it’s been so long. “Good to see you too, Cassandra.”

Allie stays close to at least one of them all through the night. It seems like the entire cast of _New Ham_ is there, all bunched together in one corner while her family and older friends stand in another. Her cousins are there, and she realises that she can’t remember the last time she saw either of them. It’s all a little much, and she feels a lot like crying while signing to her cousin Sam near the buffet.

“You and Harry dating?” he asks, and she rolls her eyes and shakes her head. He’s grabbing her another drink, but she’s ignoring how _coupley_ that feels. She tries not to think about how just about everyone at this party thinks they’re together, rubbing the pearl around her neck whenever she does.

“Never,” she signs back, easily. Sam’s eyebrows fly up.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

She shrugs. “That’s our job.”

When everyone sings _Happy Birthday_ to her, it’s easy to make out Harry’s voice from the rest. She doesn’t know how to feel.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He’s making Allie another drink, something sweet and bright, when her cousin offers him drugs.

Harry shakes his head, and her cousin-- _Campbell?--_ has the nerve to look surprised. “You sure, Bingham.”

He knows how easy it is to fall down that hole. He remembers being sixteen and burying his dad, thinks about the picture her mom keeps on the mantle, the only picture of their family from before. He thinks about it every year on the anniversary, about it every time a reporter asks a question that is a little too invasive.

He thinks about Allie Pressman sitting beside him, their shoulders pressed together, her whispering _I’m sorry._

Campbell asks again. Harry finishes making the drink and tells him, very politely, to fuck off. Campbell takes offense to that, and suddenly the drink is on the ground and Allie is right there beside him, pushing Campbell hard in the chest and demanding he leaves _right now._

Harry makes her a new drink, and they join her parents in a discussion about real estate. 

But later, while they’re sitting at the kitchen in her apartment eating leftover chocolate cake, he asks why she did it. She shrugs.

“Campbell’s always been an asshole. He shouldn’t have been so presumptuous. He should’ve left you alone.”

Harry takes a deep breath. She’s looking at him, her stare so soft that his breath catches in his throat. “Thanks, Allie.”

“Anytime.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Their last days of filming are spent on location in New York. It’s for the final scene, a dream sequence of what their lives could’ve been if things were _just a little bit different._ They spend a night walking through closed off streets, swinging clasped hands between them as a camera watches, running past storefronts, and laughing at bad jokes, and staring up at the night sky. The moon is big and clear. 

_It’s all pretend_ echoes in her head, but the smile she gives him when he presses a kiss to her cheek… the smile is real. She thinks she knows what it means. 

The cast and crew retreat to a rented out bar for the wrap party. Harry sticks beside her the whole night, and they share one too many drinks and whisper inside jokes back and forth. It feels a bit like a date, eerily like a date, but she ignores that and focuses instead on the growing fuzziness in her head. 

And, at some point, with her face pressed into his neck, breathing in the scent of his cologne, he whispers in her ear, “You wanna get out of here?”

Allie worries she’s not thinking clearly. She still answers _sure_ a bit like it’s nothing. God, it really should be nothing.

He grins, grabbing her head and pulling her out the door, both of them waving good-bye. This feels a bit like the end of something good, but she doesn’t care, no, only cares about how he keeps talking about pizza, about how they’re swinging clasped hands between them, running through the streets, how it’s not _pretend._

She doesn’t look for the hidden camera in the crowd, or think about the internet and the rumors or the fact that it’s her who’s thinking about crossing the line this time.

It’s one dollar pizza at a place open twenty four hours. They each get a slice, and he pays, and they’re both finished by the time they’ve gotten back to the hotel the studio’s housing them in. 

Everything’s still a little bit fuzzy by the time they reach the door to her room, and she leans against it to steady herself, smiling up at him so wide that it hurts. “This night’s been really fun, Harry.”

He grins, steps just a little closer, a hand on her waist. She leans into it. “Yeah?

And she’s not thinking as she speaks, letting the words fly out as she says, “Yeah. It’s felt a little bit like a date, really, but it was nice.”

Harry smiles down at her like she’s somehow everything, and she thinks that she’s melting under it. “I usually end dates with a kiss,” he tells her, and she thinks, faintly, that he must be drunk too if he’s saying something that cheesy.

Allie swallows. She’s still smiling. “Yeah?”

“Can I…” The words are soft, soft enough that she could pretend she didn’t hear it if she wanted to. She doesn’t want to.

“Yeah.”

Their first _real_ kiss is in the hallway of a hotel room, and she doesn’t once try to imagine a camera in front of them, not as he cradles her neck, not as his arms wrap around her waist, his hand pressed warm against her skin. Not as she backs into the door, his lips on her neck now, and not as she breathes in his cologne. He whispers _Allie_ so softly, and no, no she can’t imagine a camera, not as she’s breathing his name out against his skin. 

She wants him closer to her, wants it still as things become clearer, as she realises they’re barreling towards a crash.

The crash appears suddenly, out of nowhere and all at once when the elevator dings. And Allie’s pushing him away, breathless as she watches him step back, something like surprise and hurt and maybe regret appearing on his face. She doesn’t take a moment to study it, not even as his eyes land on her, familiar. She refuses to look up at him, barely registering as he walks away. She turns around and opens her hotel room door. 

_What the fuck have they done?_

And she’s on the ground, suddenly, her eyes on the ceiling now, her breathing still not normal. God, they’ve made a mistake. They’ve fucked up. She tries to tell herself that it was for the best, them splitting apart before anything else could happen, that they were lucky to have been interrupted.

Only her hands keep shaking and she’s still not breathing normally and, God, she feels so much like crying. She can’t stop thinking, searching for something to focus on, something that doesn’t remind her of him.

She can’t find anything. That’s when she finally cries.

  
  


* * *

  
  


For a moment, things were perfect. He can’t stop thinking about that moment.

But he also can’t stop thinking about how quick she was to push him away, how quickly a look of regret appeared on her face, the last thing she let him see.

He wants to forget all of it, the way her skin felt beneath his lips, how his name sounded when she whispered it, _his_ name, not a character’s.

He wants to forget how it felt to be her’s, even if it was only for a moment.

The more he tries, the more he realises that he can’t.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She leaves early the next morning for her parents house in LA. He doesn’t call her. She doesn’t call him. They don’t speak for the first time in forever.

She wonders if this is how it ends for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if i kinda hit you over the head with the parallels between the Christmas scene and the birthday scene. 
> 
> hope you enjoyed this part! I had a lot of fun writing it. 
> 
> pls pls pls comment stuff down below! you do not know how much your words mean to me!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the back of her mind she likes to think that they’re still friends, that they’re just friends that don’t talk anymore, two people who drifted because one couldn’t handle the idea of change.
> 
> -
> 
> _or the part where they're not together (but wish they were)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back! 
> 
> this chapter was beta'd by the wonderful [juggiebettyy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggiebettyy/pseuds/juggiebettyy) (aka [grizzsbizz](https://grizzsbizz.tumblr.com/) on tumblr) thank you so much for your help! 
> 
> the song at the beginning is _Ivy_ by Frank Ocean (one of my all time faves), but the song i was listening to a lot at least while writing the beginning part was _Fidelity_ by Regina Spektor
> 
> hope you enjoy!

**PART FOUR: the aftermath**

_if you could see my thoughts you would see our faces_

  
  


* * *

  
  


_“You ever think about what we could’ve been?” Anne asks. Her gaze is distant, her focus somewhere else._

_Nolan nods. He’s staring right at her. “Yeah, all the time.”_

The movie fades to black, silent for a moment before the credits begin to roll. And people are crying, a half dozen full on bawling, most quietly swiping at their faces. Allie feels a little like crying too, especially when people begin to rise and clap, giving the film a standing ovation.

Her name is up on the screen, clear as day. She was a part of that. She did that.

They did that.

He’s standing beside her, both of them in the back of the screening, behind the scenes. It’s the premiere but neither care much for watching themselves back on screen. She thinks it’s creepy, overly narcissistic. Harry gets overly critical of himself.

This film is different, though. She _wanted_ to see the finished product. She’s happy she did, too. It’d come together so beautifully.

“We did really good,” she says, turning to face him. Maybe she should’ve remained silent, but, God, she just can’t help herself. It’s been over a year since they last spoke, properly talked. It feels a bit like a lifetime, a lifetime ago that his lips were on hers.

His eyes remain on the screen. People are still clapping. “Yeah, we did.”

The second she leaves the theater, people are texting her, congratulating her on the film, on her performance. There are whispers of it taking the _Golden Lion,_ the highest prize awarded at the _Venice Film Festival._

She feels so inexplicably proud, desperate to share this moment with someone, anyone. When she turns to her side, though, Harry’s not there. She hates how she still expects him to be there, to be there laughing and crying and taking all of this in with her, a year after she fucked everything up.

Distantly, though, while she sits beside him in press conferences, as they ride back and forth in the same car to the hotel, as they stand outside screenings, she wonders if he ever thinks about what they could’ve been.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It’s wrong how much he still misses her. He should be past this, should be able to move on. _Space Station_ serves only as a brutal reminder of everything they once were, everything that almost was.

He should’ve known that Allie Pressman was too good to be true.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_“Space Station_ is the film of the decade. No questions asked. It effortlessly combines mystery and spectacle and a love story for the ages. Every shot matters. Every piece of dialogue matters. You’ll be afraid to blink watching Anne and Nolan’s story unfold. A clear reminder of the talent of Allie Pressman and Harry Bingham.” 

_\- The New York Times_

“From the very start, you know that the characters on screen are doomed, and yet you’ll still be left rooting for them long after the ending credits roll.”

_\- The Verge_

“Allie Pressman and Harry Bingham stun as young lovers in a film that’s already being hailed a modern classic.”

_\- The Atlantic_

“It’s impossible to watch _Space Station_ without shedding a few tears. Or bawling. Believe us. We’ve tried.”

_\- Salon_

* * *

  
  


People are calling it one of the best films of the twenty-first century, a modern day masterpiece. It’s compared to the _Titanic_ and _2001_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ even. There are whispers of it sweeping the _Oscars_ and she’s the favorite in the race for _Best Actress._

In all honesty, she doesn’t know how to handle any of this.

It scares her, this level of recognition. She’s being taken seriously in a way that she’s never been before. She’s the one to beat for a _fucking Oscar._ God, it’s just strange, that’s all. It seems a little like her dreams are all coming true.

But still, her finger hoovers over Harry’s contact. She wants to call him, wants to talk about everything. This is his too.

She texts him a quick _congratulations_ instead. He sends _you too, pressman_ back. It feels a little like the end.

(She wonders if she should take the pearl necklace off. It doesn’t feel right to wear it anymore. 

Her fingers shake when she moves to unclasp it. It stays on.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


For the first time ever, they don’t talk during the press tour.

It’s like they’re playing characters for the cameras, the reporters, the internet, only talking when eyes are on them. It saddens her that that’s where they’re at now-- two people who are only friends when they know someone’s filming. It’s worse than before, back when they were in high school, fifteen and sixteen and arguing over blocking. At least then they were talking.

She misses sharing donuts and stories and forgetting the cameras were even on. She misses drives to set and falling asleep with her head on his chest. She misses eating breakfast with him, and lunch, and dinner. She misses his smile and his laugh and that’d look in his eyes that he’d get, all soft as he watched her.

God, she just misses him.

She hates how her stomach still does backflips when they touch, how when she sees him, there’s always this flutter in her chest that just about hurts now. 

She hates that this is all her fault.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Allie meets Will backstage at a show at Ahmanson that Bean is in. She bumps into him, dropping a bouquet of roses meant for her friend.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, bending down to pick them up almost immediately.

She offers him a smile, the same she gives everyone these days-- practiced and sure. “Oh, it’s fine. Just as much my fault as yours.”

Recognition flashes across his features, bright and loud. She’s been getting recognised a lot lately. Has been forced to lay low. “I’m Will,” he introduces, offering her his hand to shake. She takes it.

“Allie.”

“So why are you here, Allie?” he asks, sincere curiosity in his voice. And it’s easy, so easy to answer. 

Later, she goes out to eat with him, Bean, and a few of the other members of the play’s cast. At the end of the night, as he walks her out to her cab, he asks for her number, and she gives it to him. He doesn’t make her stomach do backflips or cause a painful flutter in her chest, and she likes that.

The next night, she kisses Will after they go to get ice cream together. She’s not drunk. Neither is he. That’s how it starts.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He meets Kelly at an audition. She has a soft smile and a sharp wit, and he asks her out to coffee ten minutes after they meet. 

His car still smells faintly of Allie, so Kelly drives. She’s a good driver, and it’s upsetting how much he hates that.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Awards season hits suddenly, a mess of dress fittings and talk show appearances and horrible diets. It’s three months that have never really mattered before, but now, it’s like her entire life revolves around them. 

She’s nominated for _Best Actress- Drama_ category for the _Golden Globes,_ and everyone’s saying she’s a shoe in to win. She tries really hard not to think about that. It still scares her, for some reason.

Will is a calming presence, so undeniably there, but, still, she decides against taking him anywhere as her date. She doesn’t want things to move too fast, scared to screw up again. She wonders, briefly, if Harry has a date, but pushes that thought away as soon as it appears. It’s not fair to anyone.

She makes plans to sneak a box of sour patch kids into the show under her dress, and tries very hard not to think about movie nights, about microwave popcorn and them pressed close on her couch.

Her life is everything she’d ever dreamed it could be. She doesn’t know why she’s not happy.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They take pictures on the red carpet of the _Golden Globes_ together, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when the whole world wants you to date. His hand hovers just barely over her waist. She still misses him.

“How does it feel to be nominated?” she asks as they walk in step towards the building. 

Harry shrugs. “I could ask you the same thing.”

There’s a pause as their publicists stop them for more pictures. His hand is still hovering over her waist. They didn’t even do this as teenagers. It scares her.

“I brought sour patch kids,” she tells him, patting a pocket she all but forced a designer to sew in. “I was able to fit two boxes inside my dress.”

He offers her a half smile, almost bright, almost like before. “That’s just like you, Pressman.” She winces, just barely, wonders if he’ll ever call her _Allie_ again.

“You can have all of the green ones,” she offers, and he laughs, the cameras flash in front of them and she wonders if he’s just pretending.

It doesn’t matter. Later, as they sit side by side and watch the awards show, they’ll snack on sour patch kids during commercial breaks. He squeezes her hand when her category is announced, and, when she wins, he jumps with her, pulling her into a hug so quickly that she barely registers what’s going on. 

His cologne still smells the same.

Tearfully, she’ll whisper _I’m sorry_ into his shoulder, so soft that she can’t even hear the words. She still wonders if he hears it anyway. 

(He doesn’t.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


She thanks him at the very end of her acceptance speech.

“And, of course, to Harry Bingham, thank you for being the best co-star ever. I wouldn’t be up here without you. I hope you know that.”

When he wins, he thanks her too, something about how they’ve done _four films together and he’s still not sick of her._ Later, when all of the winners are talking backstage, he’ll spot laughing with the winner of _Best Actor- Comedy or Musical._ He’ll ask himself if it’s worth it to interrupt them.

He’ll decide it’s not.

He wonders if this is how it ends for them.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The _Oscar_ is a lot lighter than she’d thought it would be.

She stares at it backstage while waiting for her turn to deal with the press, twisting it back and forth while staring at the inscription.

 _Allie Pressman. Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. Space Station._

Her sister calls her the moment Allie’s off the stage, ushered towards a greenroom. Someone rushes towards her with a phone, and suddenly she’s talking to Cassandra who really should be asleep right now. It’s three AM in London. Allie knows. She checked.

“You won a fucking _Oscar!”_ Cassandra shouts. For some reason, Allie doesn’t smile. She hasn’t smiled since she left the stage, since the adrenaline started to wear off. It’s not that it doesn’t feel real, it’s just…

“Yeah. I did.”

Cassandra pauses. “Is everything okay?” she asks. Allie blinks.

“Yeah. Everything’s great. I just won an _Oscar.”_ She tries injecting some enthusiasm into her voice. Cass sees right through it.

“You don’t sound like someone who’s just won an _Oscar,”_ Cassandra says, and Allie can hear the frown in her voice. She wonders if she could get away with just hanging up right now, blame poor reception or something. This isn’t a conversation she wants to be having.

Across the room, there’s a TV showing a direct feed of the award show. The nominees for _Best Actor_ are being announced. Harry Bingham’s face flashes across the screen. He looks nervous, but only barely. She doesn’t think anyone else would be able to tell. 

“It’s just,” Allie starts, tearing her gaze from the TV. “It feels a little wrong, winning an award for pretending to love someone, when I never really was pretending.”

Cassandra sighs. “Al...”

Allie forces a laugh. It sounds as fake as she feels, all dressed up and holding a golden statue. It shouldn’t be hers. She doesn’t deserve it. “But it’s fine, Cass, because that was then and now… now I’m an _Oscar_ winner.” She bites down hard on her lip and smiles as wide as she possibly can, afraid that if she doesn’t she might start crying. “I’ve gotta go. Press and stuff. Talk to you later.”

She hangs up before Cassandra has a chance to say goodbye. 

Harry’s category is called just as someone motions for her to enter the press room. 

He doesn’t win. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


She throws herself into her relationship with Will.

He’s smart and sensible and calm and sweet. He likes to go to restaurants that keep candles on the tables and always stops the movie before they fall asleep. They spend a healthy amount of time together, and she prides herself on the fact that it’s easy to imagine a future without him.

In the back of an Uber, on the way to his apartment, she asks, “Blueberries or strawberries?” because it’s quiet, and she’s bored.

“Umm… I don’t know. Both?”

She nods, but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t ask the question back.

(He does ask her where she keeps her _Oscar._ She tells him that it’s in some display case at her parents house. That’s a lie. She keeps her _Oscar_ on top of a box with an old script, a blue ribbon, and a piece of silver wrapping paper inside. She’s not sure why he doesn’t need to know that.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


He throws himself into his work.

Allie’s words echo loudly in the back of his head every time he accepts a new role. He doesn’t think there’s much else for him to do now except work. And she’s not around to say anything about it, not anymore.

His camera starts to collect dust sitting on the shelf, and text messages will go unanswered for days because they’re never from who he wants to be.

(She has a boyfriend now. It’s starting to feel like it’s really over.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


There are two drawers in her dresser that she never touches. She feels bad, wonders if maybe she should send his stuff back to him, but she just can’t. God, even thinking about makes it feel final. 

In the back of her mind, she likes to think that they’re still friends, that they’re just friends who don’t talk anymore, two people who drifted because one couldn’t handle the idea of change.

She starts going over to Will’s place rather than asking him to come to hers. It feels wrong, for some reason, for him to sit where Harry sat on the couch, or open the cabinet that Harry hid her birthday present in. Her whole apartment reminds her of him, and just too much sometimes. She doesn’t want to compare him with Will. That doesn’t feel fair. 

(And maybe her apartment still smells faintly of Harry’s cologne. And she doesn’t want to, but maybe she hates how Will’s place doesn’t smell like anything.)

She embraces her inner Cassandra and makes a list of all of the things she likes about Will. She likes how there’s no flutter in her chest when he’s around, how he thinks before he speaks, how he’s always the one searching for the cameras not her, how he doesn’t wear sunglasses or yell _I love you_ when she saves him the last popsicle. She likes how there’s plenty of quiet, and how he doesn’t argue with her. She likes that when she gets cast alongside him in a play, there are no complaints about how “annoying” she is.

(God, they were teenagers, playing two of the most iconic characters in literature and arguing the entire way through it. She wonders if Harry knows that she probably wouldn’t be where she is if it wasn’t for those kind words backstage. _Trust me._ Just the idea that he believed in her-- that stuck with her for way too long.)

Allie decides to go back into theater because she’s not sure how she feels about pretending in front of a camera anymore. She keeps looking for the next _Space Station,_ and theater…

Theater is something new. It’s a fresh start.

She’s desperate for a fresh start.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He likes Kelly. She’s nice. She cares. She listens, and when he says something stupid, she tells him.

(He sees a picture of Allie on Instagram. She’s still wearing the pearl necklace. He hates how much he wants that to mean something.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


Opening night for the play is fast approaching, and she’s very tempted to reach out to Harry for the first time in over a year. His contact is right there, still favorited on her phone.

Only then, while she’s at the grocery store buying the healthiest junk food she can find for a movie night she offered to host, she spots his face right next to the face of up-and-comer Kelly Aldrich on a tabloid near checkout. _Dating rumors swirl between co-stars._

She recognizes those rumors. She used to laugh at them with him, her head against his chest while they sat on her couch, eating breakfast at the kitchen, driving back from set.

She doesn’t reach out.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Sarah tells him about Allie’s Broadway debut as though he doesn’t already know all about it, as though he hasn’t read the synopsis of the play ten times, watched interviews with cast members, and read up on the directors past work.

“You hear about it yet?” she asks, staring down at her phone.

“Nope,” he says, as casually as he can. God, that’s such a lie. Sometimes it feels like all he sees are the headlines with her name in them. His publicist thinks it would be a good move for him to show up on opening night. Harry thinks, faintly, that he couldn’t handle that.

Sarah knows he’s lying. “Are you going to go?”

Harry sighs. He does not want to be talking about this. “She has a boyfriend now, Sarah.”

His sister rolls her eyes, looking up at him. “So?”

“I don’t know if she wants me to be there.” Sarah doesn’t know the details. All she knows is that something happened between him and Allie and that they aren’t close anymore. He can tell that she wants to know more, can tell every time Sarah brings Allie up, but vague details is all she’s going to get, at least for right now. He doesn’t like talking about it because then he’s forced to remember how Allie’s lips felt against his, how it wasn’t pretend for a moment, how it all fell apart. 

That’s just a little too much for him.

“Well I’d want you to be there,” Sarah tells him. “And it’s not like you even have to talk to her. Just go to watch the play. I bet it’s going to be really good.”

He doesn’t respond to her words, and that’s the end of the conversation. 

Later, though, he asks his publicist for a ticket to opening night. 

Maybe seeing her won’t hurt as much as he imagines.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She thinks she spots Harry Bingham in the audience, up high in one of the boxes. She forgets the last part of her monologue, watches it drift and never reaches to catch it. The last time that happened she was thirteen and playing Hermia in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream._

After the shows over, while she sits in her dressing room, she thinks every knock on the door is him with a bouquet of flowers and a soft congratulations. It never is, though.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He’s right there, right outside her door with a bouquet of flowers and a well practiced speech. He’s going to say something about how _amazing_ she was and then something else about how much he _misses her._

He backs out the second he hears her voice on the other side of the door, familiar and soft, saying something about dinner plans with family. Suddenly, it’s all too much.

He leaves the flowers leaning against the door and wonders if he’ll ever forget how nice it felt to be hers, even if it was only for a moment. 

He doubts it.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The critics call her performance _magical,_ the perfect career move. The only negative bits of the reivews point out a lack of chemistry between the two leads of the play, her and Will. Will complains, calls them blind because _we’re dating, and how can we not have chemistry if we’re in a relationship?_

Allie laughs.

(She thinks about how her chemistry with Harry was called _electric._ She doesn’t mention that to Will, though.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


The funny thing is that he’s the one who introduced Kelly to Becca, and now here he is, sitting in his living room while Kelly tries to break his heart in the softest way possible. (She can’t really break it, though, because he’s not sure if it’s even his anymore.)

“I don’t think we’re being fair to ourselves,” Kelly says. She looks him right in the eye while she talks, so certain of what she’s saying. “I mean, you’re still in love with Allie and Becca is… I don’t know what she is to me yet, but what I want her to be.”

He doesn’t remember telling Kelly about Allie, at least not flat out. Kelly reads his mind, rolling her eyes as she says, “You talk about her all the time. You can’t buy certain foods because they remind you of her, and you’ll outright refuse to drive sometimes, and there’s still pictures of her everywhere around your place.” Kelly laughs. “Maybe in some alternate universe you and I would've worked, but…” she holds out her hand to him. “Friends?”

He takes it. “Friends.”

(Allie Pressman has his heart locked up in some box, and even now he doesn't mind. _She can keep it_ he thinks _Because she's the only one he can ever imagine giving it to_.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


Will says _I love you_ for the first time loud and clear, enunciating every word like he’s on stage. 

She frowns for a half a second (he doesn’t even notice) before her first is swallowed up by that smile she used to practice in the mirror.

“I love you too.” She’s rubbing the pearl around her neck. It’s not hard to imagine a camera in front of them because she knows that right now the words are _just pretend._

(She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to hear those three words and not think of Harry Bingham.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


After her short stint on Broadway, Allie returns to LA. She signs onto a film starring a deaf lead, putting her years of ASL experience to good use. And she calls up Sam, too, asks him if he’d be down to watch them film a few scenes and make sure everything is true to at least his experience.

He accepts, and Allie finds herself very much enjoying spending time with her cousin.

So with Will still in New York (he’s doing one last off-Broadway play before returning to LA), Sam’s the first person she thinks of when she’s invited to a studio fundraiser banquet.

“It’s free food and alcohol,” she tells Sam, and he agrees pretty quickly after that.

They get seated at the same table as Garret “Grizz” Visser, a rising director who just finished his first film. He tells her about a movie he’s thinking about working on, something that reminds her a bit of _Bonnie and Clyde,_ and she tells him to keep in touch with her about it.

And then, midway through the night, right as she’s rising to go to the restroom, she bumps into Harry Bingham, knocking his drink out of his hands and onto the floor.

God, she hadn’t even known that he was here.

“Pressman?” he asks, and she’s breathless, breathless as he smiles at her, even if it’s only barely there. Someone is coming over to clean up the spilled drink. 

“Hey,” she says. This shouldn’t be as awkward as it feels. Or, she should at least be able to make it feel less awkward. She's an _Oscar_ winning actress for Christ sake. “How are you?”

“I’m good. And you?”

“Yeah. I’m good too.” She can’t believe that this is what they’ve been reduced to. They’ve known each other for over fifteen years. They should be better than this. 

“I saw that play you were in,” he tells her, and she practically gasps, her eyes widening it in what must be a comical fashion because he laughs lightly. “I was going to say _hi_ but...”

“Which night?”

“Opening.”

She pauses. God, so it had been him. “Oh. Well, I guess we get to say hi now, though, right?”

He nods. “Right.”And he’s staring at her again, and her stomachs doing backflips, a flutter in her chest. “Well, I’m going to grab a new drink and head back to my table but… it was talking to you, Allie.”

“Yeah,” she breathes out. “It was nice talking to you too.”

Allie watches him return to his seat while standing in the queue for the restroom. He’s sitting with Kelly Aldrich, laughing at something she’d just said, and God, she doesn’t know why she’s having such a hard time handling this. She leaves ten minutes later, calls an Uber and says goodbye to her cousin and Grizz. They seem to have hit it off. It’s nice to know that at least one good thing came out of this evening. 

On the ride home, she cries over Harry for the first time since it happened. She worries that they’ll never be the same. She’s not sure she can live with that.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Will’s in LA for a week before flying to shoot an entire film on location in London. 

She gets that he’s busy, she’s busy too, but she can’t understand why it’s so hard for him to keep in touch with her. She’s sick of half-assed phone calls full of pretend yawns and text messages he always forgets to answer. She thinks back to that period between _New Ham_ and _Space Station_ where Harry facetime her every night. She knows it’s not fair to compare the two but…

So she books a flight to London, all spontaneously, and decides to surprise him on set. She talks the plan through with his manager, and everything’s set in motion in less than an hour. She’s proud of herself.

Only then she gets there, and he doesn’t even look surprised. No, he looks prepared, like he’d practiced his reaction in the mirror before she arrived. He’s always prepared, and she knows she should like that about him, but sometimes it’s a little annoying.

Will parades her around set like she’s some sort of trophy, and she swears _Space Station_ is mentioned at least three times. She wonders if this was worth the twelve hour flight.

They don’t make plans to do anything while she’s in London, so she finds herself staying her Cassandra and her live-in boyfriend, Gordie. 

Allie likes Gordie. He’s sweet and smart and obviously cares a lot about her sister. She likes how he puts everyone before himself. That’s important when being with Cassandra; she likes selflessness.

“Did you tell her about that time in Egypt?” Gordie asks while pouring both her and Cassandra tea. 

Cassandra shakes her head with a grin (Allie’s never seen anyone-- other than herself, of course-- make Cassandra grin before. Usually, she’s all graceful smiles and composed features. It’s nice). “And the mummy,” she adds with a laugh. 

Gordie laughs too, and Allie feels a little like she’s intruding. 

“Do you take sugar in your tea?” Gordie asks while adding sweetner to Cassandra's. He doesn’t have to ask. She wonders how long that took him. 

“Yeah, two spoonfuls.” 

Gordie and Cassandra have all these stories of the adventures they’ve had. They have inside jokes, and know things about that other that no one else does. They fit together perfectly, with a practiced ease. _This_ , she decides, _this is what love is_. 

She can only think of one guy who fits the little checklist she’s made. 

(It’s not Will.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


Will likes to order this disgustingly sweet drink in the mornings while they make caffeine runs. Allie starts ordering black coffee with a single sugar and a shot of vanilla. Somewhere in the back of her mind she can hear Harry saying, _“like my soul.”_ She doesn’t have the heart to tell it to shut up.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He’s standing near the produce section of the grocery store, picking a bundle of lettuce, when he thinks he spots her. 

It’s not her, just someone with a similar looking mess of blonde curls, but it still leaves him hyperventilating in his car. The car still smells a bit like her, too, which doesn’t help.

He texts Sarah, and she tells him to reach out to Allie.

He doesn’t. He swears he can hear Sarah sigh somewhere off in the distance.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Allie wakes up to a text from Sarah Bingham. 

She stares at the notification until the screen goes black, and wonders if she’s dreaming. She pinches herself. The text is still there.

 _do you wanna get coffee sometime? i’m in la for the first time in forever and was thinking about you_

Allie eyes the words. There’s got to be some rule about talking to your ex-best friend's little sister after you sort of broke his heart (and your own).

But, God, she misses Sarah, misses how they’d felt a little like family for a while. She misses their facetime calls and movie nights and trips to the beach. She misses Sarah in a way that feels entirely separate from missing Harry.

So she texts back _sure, i’d love to_ along with a place and time, and tells herself that people drift apart all of the time, that there’s no use feeling guilty when there’s an opportunity to fix something that was once so perfect.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The last time she properly talked to Sarah was right before the end of shooting _Space Station_ nearly three years ago. The girl has grown up since then. She’s taller now, her features sharper. It’s startling how much she looks like Harry.

“Hey, Allie,” Sarah says, sitting down in the seat across from her, a surprising amount of light in her voice. Allie’s picking at a scone, an iced black coffee in front of her. She needs to stop drinking that shit, stop searching for a flutter in her chest that she’s been missing more and more recently, ever since she saw him at that dinner. “Long time no see.”

Allie nods. “Yeah. It’s been forever.”

Sarah reaches to stick a pair of sunglasses, heart shaped ones that make Allie’s heart ache for a simpler time, into her bag. She catches Allie’s gaze, glancing over at her. She pauses. “Do you miss him?”

Allie doesn’t even begin to hesitate, the words flying out of her mouth before she can even really think about it. “Yeah.”

Sarah offers her a sad smile, something knowing hiding behind her eyes. “He misses you too.”

Allie doesn’t know how to respond, and Sarah changes the subject to school (she’s a freshman at _NYU_ studying costume design). They don’t talk about Harry. Things stay light, and both make promises to keep in touch.

Allie’s still thinking about the sunglasses as she drives home. In the back of her mind, she wonders why she didn’t try harder to stay with Harry, why now, years later, she can only seem to fall in love in front of a camera where there’s the promise of pretend.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Sarah calls him three days later. 

“Just thought I’d let you know that you’re both pining idiots.”

He hates how quickly he knows exactly who she’s talking about.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Will doesn’t notice her necklace until it’s nearly Christmas.

“Where’d you get this from?” he asks, twisting the gold chain between his fingers. She desperately wants to pull it away from him.

“From a friend forever ago.

He nods.

She doesn’t tell him that it was her best friend and that she was _in love_ with him but just hadn’t realised it yet. She doesn’t tell him about electrifying chemistry or every single moment shared that wasn’t pretend. And she doesn’t mention the two drawers in her dresser, the top two, that are still filled with clothes that might smell like him. 

She doesn’t tell Will anything. 

Instead, she closes her eyes and tries to imagine a world where she didn’t fuck everything up.

It only sort of works.

  
  


* * *

  
  


His favorite pair of sunglasses are Prada with big, black frames. Every time he wears them, he hears her voice in the back of his, familiar and teasing.

He doesn’t want it to ever shut up.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The next time she sees Harry is at Luke and Helena’s engagement party. Will’s in Vancouver filming a pilot, and she’s feeling a bit awkward, an hour in with everyone else around her all paired up.

And then Harry sits down beside her. The way the butterflies appear along with him is almost comforting.

“You already tired of this too?” he asks casually. It feels a little like something he would’ve asked her _before._ It reminds her of _New Ham._

She takes a sip of her drink. “Is it rude if I say yes?” Luke and Helena are across the room, talking to separate people but their hands clasped on top of the table. It makes her heart hurt a little, looking at them. _They made it_ she thinks bitterly _and we didn’t._

Harry shrugs, pulling her out of her thoughts. “Probably.”

“I think it would’ve been better if they’d served real food. I pulled a server aside and asked for a tray of those crab puffs they were passing around. I think they thought I was joking.”

He laughs. “Remember when you ate an entire plate of horderves at that industry thing?” She nods her head vigorously. “They’re probably hiding the crab puffs from you, trying to save money.”

She makes a face. “Well I need to eat something substantial before I starve.”

His head tilts to the side, and he’s looking at her curiously. God, that reminds her of before too. “You drive here yourself?” he asks, and she snorts. 

“I almost got into an accident at an intersection downtown two weeks ago and have been Ubering everywhere ever since.”

He pauses, taking a deep breath. He looks nervous, and that makes her nervous too. “Wanna escape to my place? I’ll feed you,” he offers, the words coming out in a rush.

She doesn’t think before saying _yes,_ and his smile, so bright that it almost hurts to look at, lets her pretend that they’re still best friends, that nothing happened, that they didn’t fuck up. She thinks, faintly, that she’d go with him even if she wasn’t hungry.

They say good-bye to everyone together, paired up. She swears she sees Elle and Bean exchange money, but she’s only barely paying attention because suddenly Harry’s grabbing her hand and pulling her out the door and the butterflies are everywhere, fluttering around her stomach.

And it’s raining outside, raining for the first time in forever, so he covers them with his jacket and then run to where he’s parked, laughing so hard that it hurts and--

He’s still driving the same car as before, two pairs of sunglasses in the glove compartment and a sticker she’d stuck on the dash from a _Glossier_ care package.

She feels a little like crying.

“You okay?” he asks, turning the key. Her hands are shaking. He must’ve noticed.

But she smiles at him, not the least bit forced, her eyes just barely glassy. “Yeah. I’ve just missed you, that’s all.”

“I’ve missed you too, Allie.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Sitting in his car, them driving up into the hills, windows rolled down because she’d always liked how the air smelled after it rained, he can’t stop thinking that is all just some cruel dream.

She laughs at something he says, and he wishes to never wake up.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They’re in his kitchen making pasta. She’s grating Parmesan cheese into an expensive looking bowl, and he’s stirring something in a pot on the stove. She forgot that it was supposed to feel this easy, being with someone else. She worries she might start crying.

“So how are you and Will?” Harry asks, and she didn’t know him so well, she wouldn’t recognize the tightness in his voice.

Her lips purse. She wonders if he notices that. (God, she really should know by now that he always notices.) “Good.” Her voice is tight too. “He’s getting his first real taste of Hollywood.”

Harry laughs, and it’s tinged with sarcasm. She feels a lot like joining in. “Hope he enjoys it.” Allie thinks about all of those parties they’d attend as kids, of the fancy people who’d always tell him he’d looked like his dad. She wonders if Harry really had a choice at the start, wonders how far away a different world is, one where they’re just two normal kids meeting while in school or maybe at a coffee shop or on a dating app.

“I’m sure he will,” she finally says. Distantly, she thinks about how she hasn’t even spoken to Will in well over a week, how she keeps seeing pictures of him with other girls, how she doesn’t even really care about any of it.

“How about you and Kelly? How is she?” she asks because it feels like her turn to ask about significant others. Absentmindedly, she rubs the pearl around her neck. She knows he notices that.

“Just friends now, actually. She’s been dating Becca Gelb for months. We all went to lunch together. Split the bill.”

The fact that he’s not with Kelly anymore makes her happier than it should. She ignores that feeling. Or at least tries to. “You think Becca will give us a sneak peak into whatever she’s working on because she’s dating your ex?”

Harry laughs. “Maybe.”

Later, she’ll notice a single plaid pillow on his couch. She’ll throw it at him while laughing so hard it hurts. She’s happy, really, truly happy, for the first time in what feels like forever.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Two days later, Harry invites her over for a movie night with some friends. She sits beside him on the couch, their shoulders pressed together as _Knives Out_ plays. The morning after that, he picks her up for coffee. 

His face lights up when she orders her’s black with a single sugar and a shot of vanilla. For the first time in a long time, she thinks that maybe they’ll be okay.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He texts Allie everyday now. 

_[9:28] Allie: soccer or football_

_[9:28] Harry: soccer. obviously_

_[9:29] Allie: i’ve never even seen you at a soccer game_

_[9:29] Allie: just admit that you’re a bandwagon rams fan already_

_[9:29] Harry: never_

_[9:30] Harry: cheetos or doritos_

_[9:30] Allie: cheetos_

_[9:31] Harry: you’re disgusting_

She still wears the necklace he got her for Christmas forever ago. He wonders if that means he’s still got a chance, but let’s that thought go as soon as it appears. 

He already lost her once. He’s not going to let it happen again.

  
  


* * *

  
  


For her birthday, Harry gets her a bouquet of flowers and a pair of star shaped sunglasses. For her birthday, Will proposes.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“No.” She means for it to come out softer than it does. She means to be quieter, lighter, to treat this like it’s just some joke. It’s not just some joke, though. Will’s down on one knee in the middle of his apartment. Or their apartment? He’d asked her to move in with him two months ago and she’d accepted, but, when she thinks about it, she doesn’t even have a full drawer of things here.

Will has a ring. He means it.

“What?” he asks, standing up. She swallows. For once in her life, she needs to think before speaking, needs to think before making another mistake, before forcing him back down on his knee because that feels like it could be the sensible thing to do.

“No, no I can’t.” In her head, she makes a list of all of things she doesn’t like about Will. She doesn’t like how there’s no flutter in her chest when he’s around, how he always thinks too much before he speaks, and how he’s always searching for cameras, wanting them to see her with him like she’s some kind of prize. She doesn’t like how he never wears sunglasses or how he doesn’t yell ‘love you’ randomly, sometimes just as a joke and other times seriously. She doesn’t like the quiet, and she doesn’t like how they don't argue. 

When she thinks about it, she wonders if she ever really liked him or if she just liked that he wasn’t someone else. 

“Why not, Allie?”

She shakes her head. “Because… because I don’t think you’re it. I don’t think you’re the one.”

Will scoffs. “Allie what are you talking about? We’ve been together for over two years. This is what comes next.”

“I can’t marry you just because it’s the next step in your plan. God, Will, I barely even know you. We barely see each other, but I don’t miss you when you're gone. I don’t fall asleep thinking about you, and I don’t…” she drifts off slowly. Will’s already pocket the ring. She realises that she’s comparing him with someone else. “We’d get bored, if we got married, and then you’d start looking for whatever the next step was, and I wouldn’t even care, and it’d all be a mess.”

He blinks over at her. “I think you should probably go, Allie.”

“I think I should too.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


She doesn’t cry until she’s back in her own apartment, and even then it’s not about Will. She finally opens those top two dresser drawers. 

_She’s in love with Harry Bingham._

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what'd you think? (pls tell me down below. pls pls pls!) 
> 
> another huge thanks to [juggiebettyy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggiebettyy/pseuds/juggiebettyy) for all your help!
> 
> see yall for the next part


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I love you too."
> 
> -
> 
> _or they finally get their shit together (eventually)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to the second to last part (or last part if you don't count the epilogue). i learned while writing this that i do my best work at one in the morning. not sure how that's going to fare for me later in life, but whatever.
> 
> this chapter was once again beta'd by the wonderful [juggiebettyy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggiebettyy/pseuds/juggiebettyy) (aka [grizzsbizz](https://grizzsbizz.tumblr.com/) on tumblr)! this would've been such a mess without her help.
> 
> the song at the beginning is _Read My Mind_ by The Killers, an all time personal favorite song. _Friday I'm in Love_ by The Cure is also featured somewhere in here.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

**PART FIVE: the conclusion**

_the stars are blazing like rebel diamonds cut out of the sun_

  
  


* * *

  
  


First, she wants some quiet. She wants to take a moment for herself, wants to take a million deep breaths, wants to remember what it feels like to say that she’s really her own person again. It’s like there’s this weight lifted off her chest that she didn’t even know was there.

And she wants to talk to Harry, too. She wants to talk to him without feeling guilty, without feeling like she’s hiding something. She wants to talk to him before the internet catches up, before the articles are published, and before people start talking. There’ll be pictures, pictures of her and Harry together grabbing coffee. Those pictures will come out just as her and Will announce their break-up. People will assume things. 

She already has her statement written, and she makes a note to share it with her publicist tomorrow morning. She wrote it in five minutes, and she doesn’t feel the least bit bad about it.

> _In some alternate universe, maybe we would’ve worked out, but right here, right now, there are too many things standing between us and happiness. I wish Will nothing but the best, because that really truly is what he deserves._

She wonders if he’ll see right through her words-- she knows Harry would-- or if they’ll be the thing that appeases him. She wonders if he’ll take them with a smile, with no protest or argument or unease. She doesn’t know the answer, and that doesn’t upset her.

The night Allie turns down Will’s proposal, while she holds one of Harry’s old button ups, the fabric faded and blue, Cassandra is the first person she calls. (Cassandra’s the only one who knows about what happened with Harry. She thinks that it’s just as much his fault as hers. She thinks that he was an ass who held a grudge. Allie doesn’t agree, but it’s still nice to know that Cass will always be on her side.)

“Will and I are done,” Allie breathes into the phone, and it’s nice to say it out loud, almost comforting. Out loud, it sounds final.

“Al…” Cassandra had always liked Will. She’d liked how he was stable, constant. She liked how he was calming and sometimes a little soft. Allie thinks that she liked how he was decidedly not Harry. For a little while, a long while really, that’s what Allie had liked too. It’s wrong though, to like a person just because they’re not someone else. It doesn’t make for a good relationship.

“He asked me to marry him.”

Cassandra lets out a light exhale. “And you got scared?”

“No I…” Allie pauses. She’d still be there right now if he’d never asked. Maybe it’d be later, later that she ended it. Maybe it’d be after she found a ring, or maybe just the second he gave her a reason to, an excuse. That doesn’t matter now, though. No, it’s over. “I just realised that I wanted someone else.”

It’s okay now for her to be thinking of Harry, okay for her to be thinking of his hair, always a mess of curls, of the glasses he wears while reading scripts and his insistence that blue raspberry jolly ranchers are the best ones. It’s okay for her to be thinking of her head on his chest in the mornings right after she’d wake up, of his arm around her waist, of that smile he’d give her while they drove around, a bit like he couldn’t really believe she was there.

But Cassandra sighs. She sounds tired. “Not him, Allie.”

Allie’s silent for a moment, waiting for an explanation that doesn’t come. She’s not eleven anymore. Her sister can’t pull her behind her, telling her who to fall in love with and who to hate. The line clicks. Cassandra hangs up.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It’s the middle of the night and his phone won’t stop ringing. The only reason he even reaches for it is because he's worried it might be Allie.

“Hello?”

“What the fuck is going on with you and my sister?” Sharp and straight to the point. He has flashbacks to when he was twelve. He knows who it it’s immediately. 

“Cassandra?” he asks, switching on a light. Allie hates when he asks questions he already knows the answers to, but it’s two in the morning. What the fuck.

“You didn’t answer my question, Harry.”

He stares across the room at the wall. Blinks. “How did you get my number?”

“What did you do?” And Cassandra sounds desperate now, like this is the only thing she’s ever not been able to understand. “Because she just turned down this really nice guy because she’s hung up on someone else and can’t think of anyone who fits the description but you.”

Harry takes a deep breath in. It’s shaking, shaking as the words slowly register in his mind. “I didn’t do anything,” he says carefully. Cassandra takes a breath too. It sounds like she’s trying to compose herself. He wonders if he’d be able to do the same. “I just don’t think she loved him, that’s all.”

Now that he thinks about it, she never really mentioned Will. He always seemed to be gone, off shooting something. Allie never seemed to mind. Maybe that’s where his words come from.

“It’s really late, Cassandra, so I’m going to go. Maybe we’ll talk later. Who knows.”

He hangs up before she has a chance to accuse him of anything else. He doesn’t go back to sleep. He’s not sure he can.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Two days later, Allie tells him the news over lunch. They’re at a Vietnamese restaurant staring at one another over bowls of Pho. He keeps complaining that the soup is too hot, and she keeps telling him off for being so impatient.

“Will and I are over,” she tells him casually. She says the words like they’re nothing, like she hadn’t practiced them in the mirror before he picked her up, like she hasn’t been waiting for the perfect moment to bring it up. 

She doesn’t want it to be a big deal because it’s not a big deal, or shouldn’t be when brought up with him. He doesn’t need to know that he’s part of the reason why because they’re just friends, and friends don’t tell friends that they _love_ each other, at least when it’s that kind of love.

She doesn’t want to give them a reason to self destruct all over again.

Across the table, Harry’s twirling his noodles around his chopsticks. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah. He proposed on my birthday like it’d make the day more special or something. That was his gift, a fancy ring and a big question.” Harry laughs a little into his soup. She smiles.

“And you said no?” His words are soft. She stares over at him (at twenty-two, she’d hated the fact that she could read his emotions better than anyone else’s. Now, though, she takes pride in it). “Why?”

She shrugs, almost as if turning down marriage proposals is something she does on a regular basis. “He only saw what I wanted him to see, and I only like him because…” she pauses, swallows, wonders if she’s maybe taking this too far. 

No, she owes Harry this. “I liked Will because of everything he wasn’t, and the more I thought about it, I just couldn’t imagine a future with him. I didn’t love him.”

“Oh,” he says, some of the noodles falling off of his chopsticks and back into his soup, splashing broth on the table. She laughs because she just can’t help it, and he laughs too, loud and bright and familiar. 

“Plus,” she adds, trying to keep the conversation light. “He thought the opening number was the best song in _La La Land.”_

“It’s obviously _City of Stars.”_

“Obviously.” He starts humming it, and she’s smiling so wide that it hurts. The family at the table next to them is starring as if her and Harry are crazy, but she doesn’t care at all.

She wonders, blindly, if they’re best friends again. She doesn’t ask.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Photos of them out together at lunch surface on the internet. Her team and Will’s team release their statements simultaneously, his focused on how they drifted due to conflicting schedules with some bullshit added on to the end about how they’ll _always be friends._

She snorts when she reads it. She wonders if two people whose only contact is through press releases can really ever count themselves as friends. She figures it doesn’t matter.

No one pays attention to the statements anyway. The whole narrative is some convoluted love triangle between her, Harry, and Will. _#hallie_ trends on twitter for the fifth time. 

It scares her a little, how she’d almost missed the tag.

(Harry tweets something out about hanging out with _friends,_ and Allie retweets it. That’s their version of addressing things, not that anyone cares.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


_HarryBinghamPressman - guys wtf she’s single #and he’s single #shits about to get real_

_halliedeservestheworld - can we all just collectively agree to forget about the past two and a half years because he still looks at her like she’s his whole world and that’s all that matter #it’s a slowburn #and i hate it_

_HalliePressman - WE’RE ALIVE_

  
  


* * *

  
  


His phone is ringing for the second time this week at some ungodly hour. He still reaches for it, though, because it could be Allie. He doesn’t think he’d ever miss an opportunity to talk with her.

“So I guess you guys finally got your shit together and talked, huh.”

Harry sighs. It is too early in the morning for this shit. He wonders if he could get away with throwing his phone away and moving to some small tropical island. Or to a farm, maybe. Allie’s always talking about starting over.

“Hi Sarah.”

“I heard she broke up with her boyfriend.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you and everyone else on the internet.”

Sarah snorts. He considers hanging up on her and going back to bed, but knows that she’d just call back. “You better get with her soon. The _Hallie_ fandom is pretty dead and I’m running out of pictures of the two of you to post.”

“Good-bye Sarah.”

“I’m not joking, Harry.”

Later, once the sun is actually out, she’ll text him pictures of Allie laughing at something he’d said, of them both wearing sunglasses and tired smiles out of coffee shops, of him staring at her during an interview. He wonders if _pretend_ is ever going to be enough for him.

It wasn’t before, and he can’t think of much that’s really changed.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Cassandra calls her early in the morning with a quiet apology. “If you really like him then I can learn how to put up with him.”

Allie laughs softly. “Thanks, Cass.”

She doesn’t bother telling her sister that Harry’s probably never going to be her’s, that she had a chance once upon a time and didn’t take it. She tries really hard not to think about a future full of Cassandra and Harry arguing while her and Gordie make tea.

She fails.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Grizz invites her out to lunch to talk through that film he’d told her about at that dinner forever ago.

“It’s called _Fugitive,”_ he tells her. He paints this picture of two detectives who are close friends and maybe might love each other. They’re on the road searching for a criminal. The excerpts he reads her from the script are equal parts light and heavy, and he tells her that he plans for the film to be a “happy soul crusher.” 

She loves it.

In the back of her mind, though, the entire time Grizz is talking, all she can think of is Harry driving her to set every morning, of him setting up cones in an empty parking lot and telling her not to run them over. She can’t stop thinking about his calm smile as he glances over at her at red lights, how his profile looks with his eyes fixed on the road.

“Do you have anyone in talks to play the male lead?” she asks, and Grizz shakes his head.

“No, why?”

Allie smiles. “I think I might know someone.”

As she’s leaving the restaurant, she realises what exactly this means. She _wants_ to play Harry Bingham’s love interest. Huh.

  
  


* * *

  
  


This time, it is her calling him.

“I’ve got a script you really need to read,” she says, skipping over any other introductions. It’s nearly midnight, and he was _this_ close to falling asleep, and-- God, he doesn’t even care. He really would answer whenever she called. He hopes she knows that.

“Why?”

“Because I have this crazy theory that you can’t read, and I want to test it out.”

He can’t help his grin, but she can’t see that. He keeps his tone tired. “Allie I swear to God if you woke me up to--”

“I’m joking,” she interrupts. “I need you to read this script because I’m only going to sign onto the film if you agree to be a part of it, and I really want to be in this movie.”

Harry pauses. He thinks back to the last time he starred opposite Allie Pressman. He thinks about that look on her face in the hotel hallway, the instant regret. He thinks about them barely talking for three years. He can’t do that again.

“Remember Grizz? He’s the guy who’s dating my cousin Sam. He directed that one film that came out last year, _The Settlement._ I went to the premiere, and it was amazing, and I’m dying to work with him--” She’s rambling.

Harry’s not sure he can’t handle losing her all over again.

“Do you really think it’s better than _Space Station?”_ he finally asks, and Allie lets out a half sigh. 

“I promise I wouldn’t have even brought it up I didn’t think it could be. Just… just read it. Please. It’s good, Harry. It’s really good.”

“Fine,” he breathes out, and if it was anyone but her, it’d feel a little like defeat. He doesn’t care. 

But then he can practically hear her beaming, and that feels a bit like a success. “I’ll send it over right now! You’re gonna love it!”

She hangs up and his phone chimes again when the script is emailed to him.

He reads it all in one sitting, knows that he won’t be able to fall asleep, not now. He tries to figure out if it’s worth it to risk it all.

The script is perfect. He still doesn’t have an answer.

He’s not sure if he can handle it, falling hard for her again. But while reading the last lines, the ending of the film, he can imagine her smile so clearly that it’s a bit like she’s right there in front of him.

He couldn’t say no even if he wanted to. Not to her. Not ever.

Harry calls her. It’s two in the morning. Her voice is full of sleep, and it’s nice to be on the other end of the phone call for once.

“I’m in.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


She thinks it might be a mistake, asking him to sign on to the film.

It’s just… it feels like _them._ It feels like a chance they haven’t had in years. It feels like the next step.

She thinks, blindly, that she’d do it all over again, rewind time and live through every single stupid mistake she made, if she got to the chance to feel the way she did while they were at their peak. That scares the shit out of her.

There’s a flutter in her chest when he calls. 

Yeah, she really would do it all again.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It’s three in the afternoon and she’s sitting in a booth at a pizza place with Sam, Grizz, and Harry. Harry’s got pizza sauce on the corner of his mouth, and she’s using a paper napkin to wipe at it. Grizz is staring, and Sam’s taking a picture.

“What?” she asks, a bit incredulously. Sam snorts. 

“Are you two always like this?”

Harry’s eyebrow furrows together. “Like what?”

Grizz lets out a laugh, taking a bite of his pizza. “Like some old married couple.”

Allie pauses. She wants to say that this is how they’ve always been, a little too close. She wants to talk about months spent living together, meals shared on the couch, Harry vacuuming before friends came over, them doing the dishes together, them brushing their teeth side by side in the bathroom. 

She doesn’t say any of that. 

Harry throws a crumpled up napkin at them, and Grizz laughs some more, and Sam makes a show of sending the photo to some group chat that Harry and Allie are not included in. She thinks that this feels a little like family.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The cast list for _Fugitive_ is announced. It’s really just the two of them, so it’s not a very long list.

 _#hallie_ trends on twitter for the sixth time.

_alliepressmanismyreligion - reunited and it feels so gooooood_

_anne &nolan4eva - if they don’t kiss at least once im suing _

_HallieIsLoveHallieIsLife - i don’t know what we did to deserve this blessing_

Harry sends her the best reactions, texting them to her accompanied with a laughing-crying emoji. She texts back that _only old people use that emoji,_ and he tells her that she’s _hurting his feelings._ This is the kind of thing that she’d missed while they weren’t talking. She wonders why she didn’t realise that then.

The reactions send her down a bit of a _Hallie_ rabbit hole. God, there are so many pictures of them, practically the entirety of her twenties chronicled through the tag. A picture of them at the Met Gala catches her eye. She’s dressed like a star and him as the night sky. It’s captioned-- rather cheesily-- _he looks at her like she hung the stars in the sky._ Allie starts to cry.

She remembers him saying _I love you_ in their kitchen while _Just Like Heaven_ played. God, she’d been so stupid. There was a chance for them, a real chance, a missed opportunity followed by a pearl necklace.

She wonders if _just friends_ will ever be enough for her. She doubts it, but that doesn’t matter. No, not anymore. They already had their chance.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They’re taking a break from shooting when Harry and her drive into Austin and he drags her onto one of those electric scooters available for rent all around the city.

“Harry, this doesn’t feel like a good idea,” she calls out, but he’s already speeding off, leaving her to follow him. It’s like he doesn’t understand that she was the kid who spent a whole month trying to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels. She knows he remembers that story. God, he’d spent a solid week in high school making fun of her for it.

“Hurry up, Pressman,” he calls back, turning around to grin at her. He’s not even wearing a helmet because helmet hair scares him, and she wonders if they could arrest him for that. He’d probably charm his way out of it, though, which very much pisses her off. 

He’d charmed his way into getting her to ride on these stupid electric death traps too, and she’d thought she was immune. She should know better by now.

“Please slow down,” she shouts at him, ignoring the strange looks from passerbyers. She wonders if they recognize them. This is supposed to be their break from work, a day of relaxing and eating really good Mexican food. Instead, she’s getting helmet hair while trying to figure out if it’s safe for her to travel any faster than five miles per hour.

It’d honestly probably be safer for her to just chase him on foot. And faster. She’s weighing the pros and cons when her scooter hits a bump in the sidewalk, and she goes flying off.

She sees stars, spots of white crowding her vision, and it feels a little like the breath has been knocked straight out of her chest. Harry is not ever going to let her forget about this. 

He’s running up to her, she can see him as she sits up. “Shit.” There’s a bit of a crowd forming around her. No one moves to help her up, but she swears she spots a few people recording. “Fuck. Allie, are you okay?” he asks, and it sounds a bit frantic. 

She lets out a soft laugh. “Bet you’re glad I risked helmet hair,” she jokes, and he lets this sigh of relief, offering her his hand and pulling her up to her feet. He runs a hand through his hair (it’s perfect. She hates him) and laughs a little too. 

“God, Pressman, you scared the shit out of me.”

He keeps their hands clasped the entire way back to the car. She blames the pounding in her chest on the crash.

Later, pictures of The Accident (Harry laughs the first time she makes that joke, and she thinks that she’ll probably keep making it until he stops) appear all over the internet. Allie posts a series of the pictures on her Instagram with the caption _scooters are stupid._ Harry comments that she’s lucky to have made it out with only two scraped knees, and she replies that she feels like she’s six again. 

The internet freaks out, but Allie thinks that’s sort of to be expected at this point.

  
  


* * *

  
  


His heart is racing when he sees her laying on the ground.

He refuses to let go of her hand until they get back to the car. When he squeezes it, she squeezes back.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Allie,” he says, probably for the fifth time now.

She rolls her eyes. “Sarah’s already made a calendar out of the pictures. She wants to mass produce it. I think we should let her.”

“Does it include that one where you’re trying to take your helmet off but can’t because your hair is too much of a mess.”

“Obviously.”

When he grins over at her, she grins back. “Then I want one for every room of my house.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


They get into fights at craft services, casual fist fights over the last macaroon. She blames Grizz for this because it’s his idea for there to be macaroons at craft services in the first place. Allie thinks it’s because they’re her cousin Sam’s favorite type of cookie. It makes her heart hurt a little.

It’s nice being on set with Harry again, another one of those things that she hadn’t realised she’d missed. They just know each other so well at this point; they’ve been acting together for well over a decade. It was _Romeo and Juliet_ then. God, they’d been so young.

When they’re somewhere in the desert filming on location, sitting in his hotel room eating junk food paid for by the studio, the first _New Ham_ movie starts playing on TV.

“Oh my God, Harry, we have to watch this,” she says, turning the volume up. It’s late, later than they should probably be up. She should be back in her own hotel room. She shouldn’t be alone with him.

“Do we really?”

Allie rolls her eyes. “Yes! I wanna know if we ever got better at acting. Or, more specifically, if _I_ ever got better at acting; everyone knows that your talent peaked in this film.”

Harry snorts. “Pretty sure this was actually your peak, Pressman.”

“Shush,” she says, punching him on the arm. “We’ve already missed the opening sequence.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Normally, he hates watching himself back on screen. It just feels wrong.

He’s not sure why this feels different.

“I did crunches before this scene so that my abs would look better,” he admits, and she throws a cheeto at him and gasps. 

“You did not!”

He laughs. God, they’d been so young. “I did! I just hid it from you because I thought you would’ve made fun of me.”

And she’s laughing too, her head thrown back, the sound the only thing he can really focus on. “Oh I definitely would’ve made fun of you.”

She pauses, stares at the screen, laughs a little more to herself. “Elle would always yell at me for eating donuts before takes. She said I was _fucking up her art.”_

“I believe that.”

And he’s staring at her while Kat and Alex kiss. She doesn’t notice. “God, that took us what, five takes?” she asks, turning to him. She’s grinning so wide that he can’t help but grin too.

“Six,” he corrects. He wants to tell her that he thinks he fell for her that day, fell hard when she leaned in, fell when he realised he wasn’t pretending. He wants to tell her and to maybe move on after that, for his future to finally be something other than just Allie Pressman.

He doesn’t say anything. They keep watching the movie. At the end of the night, she goes back to her hotel room, and he wonders if she’ll ever really know.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Allie starts bringing this really fuzzy blanket with her to set because she likes to be able to take naps whenever possible. Harry joins her, and they push their chairs close together, her head on his shoulder, eyes closed. Their breathing matches up, chests rising and falling in time. She’s trying to re-memorize the feeling of him being close to her (while ignoring the fact that she never really forgot. God, how could she ever forget).

The first time they fall asleep pressed close on set, it scares her a little. It scares her when she wakes up with her hand in his, with her head pressed against his chest, his heartbeat loud in her ear. She's already trying to imagine a camera in front of them; she's not sure if she can handle being totally platonic roommates again. (She knows the type of toothpaste he uses, that he likes to vacuum on Wednesdays and do laundry on Sundays. She's not sure what she's supposed to do with this information now.) She didn't handle it all that well the first time.

It happens again and again and again, though, her waking up beside him, his arm around her, familiar enough that it’s comforting. It somehow leaves her feeling more well rested than the eight hours of sleep she'll get sometimes on the weekends.

She decides that it's okay for them to cuddle under blankets between takes. The cameras are right next to them, so it's practically _pretend_ . When she leans into him she thinks _pretend_ . When he rubs small circles into her wrist she thinks _pretend_. She thinks it so much it doesn't seem like a word anymore, just a bunch of sounds mixed together telling her that she isn't crossing any lines.

(She has to resist the urge to cross the line and invite him over, to fall asleep on the couch next to him and never let him leave. Her place doesn't smell like his cologne anymore. She hates herself just a little for wishing it still did.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


She can't have him in her apartment because that's just a little too much, but she can wear his old hoodies, the ones she kept locked tight in those two dresser drawers. They smell like him, but she decides that they're hers. They're hers because she's the only one who's ever going to see them, not him, not the cameras, not the world.

  
  


* * *

  
  


His character in _Fugitive,_ Parker, drives like a maniac sometimes, and Harry (Mr. I’ve-been-driving-since-I-was-thirteen) takes on all of it. It’s mostly just sharp turns off on closed off desert roads, or stopping suddenly after driving fast.

And there was this one film he did post _-Space Station_ that involved stuff like this, and he didn’t care then, didn't care at all. Only now it’s Allie sitting beside him, and, God, all he can really think about is fucking up and hurting her.

He learns that she likes to play with her seatbelt, adjusting its crossbody over and over, when she's nervous before takes. He learns that her parents didn't let her out of a booster seat until she was nearly ten because she wasn't tall enough. 

He learns that she knows he's nervous (she’s always been able to read him like a book) and will lean over before takes and whisper, "Don't worry so much, Harry," before putting on the calm features that make up her character, Faye.

Driving, right alongside sleeping and kissing and laughing and sometimes even breathing, sits atop the list of things he can't do without thinking of Allie Pressman.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_The hotel they’re staying at is cheap. Gray tinged white bedding and a flickering light in the hall. They’re nearly a week into the chase, tired of it, of searching and searching and finding only what’s supposed to be found._

_“Sometimes I’m not sure if I even want to catch them,” Faye says slowly. She falls back against the bed. Parker moves to lay down beside her._

_“It’s the job, Faye.”_

_“I know.”_

_He pauses and they sit in silence for a moment. “Would you run if you did something like that?” he finally asks, staring up at the ceiling. Their shoulders are touching, fingers grazing._

_“I don’t know.” She turns to her side to look at him. She studies his features, stares at the slope of his nose and the curve of his jaw._

_“I wonder what it feels like, running from something.”_

_“Probably not good. You’re always looking back.” She says, still studying him._

_“Would you run away with me?” he asks, turning to face her. Their eyes meet but neither turn away._

_“Yeah.” She doesn’t think twice about her words. If Parker asked her to run away, to never look back, and start over somewhere else, God, she’d do it in an instant._

Grizz calls cut from somewhere far away. He’s grinning, wide and loud. “Perfect!”

From next to Allie, someone holding a mic lets out a small laugh. “God, I’ve been doing this for years,” he says to them as everyone resets. “And you two make me think that it’s all real.”

She smiles up at him, thinks about the _Oscars,_ about calling Cass, about how it hasn’t been pretend for her for a really long time. “Guess we’re doing our jobs right then.”

She doesn’t even notice Harry rubbing small circles into her wrist.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He wonders when she’ll realise that this hasn’t been pretend for him in years.

Probably never.

He’d still run away with her.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Principle photography for _Fugitive_ ends on a Wednesday.

Allie has a whole slate of projects lined up before the press tour starts.

She worries that they’ll drift again, not talk for months at a time. She worries that she’ll miss him.

Harry drags her out to pizza two days after the wrap party. He makes a promise to stay in touch. She think that they’ll be okay.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Luke and Helena get married on the beach four months after _Fugitive_ wraps. In the time between, Allie’s already filmed a supporting role in a movie, and Harry the first two episodes of a _HBO_ miniseries. In the time between, they’d talked everyday, facetime twice a week and sending back and forth pictures of what their lives are. Her of morning tea and craft services and a fuzzy blanket she’d just bought. Him of this park near his house that he’d taken to running through and the different foods he’s trying to learn how to make.

Harry picks her up from the airport, hugging her so tight that it hurts and swinging her in a circle, her luggage dropped on the ground. His nose is pressed into her neck, and the only thing she can really smell is his cologne. 

“How much do you wanna bet Luke cries through the entire ceremony?” Allie asks as they pull apart. Harry’s grabbed her bags.

He laughs. She doesn’t try imagining a camera in front of them because she doesn’t want this to ever be _pretend_ again.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They’re slow dancing to _Natural Woman_ by Aretha Franklin. Luke had cried through the entire ceremony, and he swears that there wasn’t a dry high in the room as Helena delivered her vows.

“They’re cute together,” Allie says, and he laughs.

“They’ve been together for over ten years, Pressman.”

She laughs too. “Doesn’t mean they’re not still cute.”

He pauses. “I bet we’d be cuter.”

She breathes out a soft exhale. “Maybe we would.”

They don’t talk for the rest of the song. She still wipes frosting from the corner of his mouth, and kisses his cheek at the end of the night. He lets himself have that.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They kick off the press tour six months later with an appearance on the YouTube series _Hot Ones._ The worst part is that she was the idiot who thought it’d be a good idea. She’d thought that it would be easy, that people were dramatic-- Becca had gone on the show once and spent a week complaining about it, and Allie really wishes she’d listened. God, she doesn’t even like spicy food. How did she ever think this would be a good idea?

“Since we usually have only one guest at a time,” Mickey, the host, starts. “We only have one plate of wings. Hope you two don’t mind sharing.”

“‘Course not,” Allie says with a smile. It’s her camera smile, the one she’d perfected when she was little. Harry’s knee brushes against hers under the table, and she leans into him just barley. It faintly registers somewhere in the back of her mind that she doesn’t really care if the camera catches her. “You don’t mind sharing food with me, right?” 

Harry shrugs. “I’m only here to watch you suffer, Pressman.” 

She makes a face at him. He makes one back. 

The first wing is easy. 

“So I heard that you two would drive to set every morning,” Mickey starts. Allie hands the wing to Harry and he takes a bite. She wonders when sharing food became normal for them. “Did that help at all with filming the driving scenes?”

“Yeah, probably. I’ve been driving her to set since our _New Ham_ days, so we were already pretty comfortable in the car together,” Harry responds easily. 

“He hasn’t crashed yet, so I wasn’t too worried going into filming.”

Mickey nods. “This is your fifth film together, right?” They both nod. “Are you guys ever afraid that you’ll get sick of working together?”

Harry shakes his head. “‘Course not. Allie’s always been my favorite person to work with.”

She snorts. “I wouldn’t say always, Harry. Remember _Romeo and Juliet?”_

He blinks over at her, suddenly soft. “Even then.”

Allie swallows and turns back to Mickey, trying hard to listen as he asks the next question. It’s been so long now; she doesn’t need to go and get caught up in the past.

She starts to crash around the third or fourth wing, right around the time that a familiar segment, _Name that Gram,_ pops up.

“What’s the story behind this picture?” Mickey holds up a picture of her standing next to life size cutouts of _One Direction_. Harry laughs and she half glares at him behind her glass of milk. 

“The one thing I took from the _New Ham_ set was a _One Direction_ band poster, so Harry thought it’d be funny to put these in my apartment,” she turns to him, ignoring the burning in her mouth, and the fact that her eyes won’t stop watering. “They scared the shit out of me and I forced him to get rid of them.” She pauses, taking a sip of milk. It does nothing to help. “Do you still have them?”

He grins over at her. She hates that he’s good at this. “They’re in the guest bedroom.”

“And what about this picture?” Mickey asks, pulling up a picture of Harry wearing heart shaped sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt. Her heart skips a beat.

“That’s from a few years ago around Christmas,” she says slowly. Her mouth still feels like it’s on fire, but for a second, she barely even notices. “Harry’s sister Sarah dragged us out and forced him into the shirt. Pretty sure he burned it afterwards.”

Mickey’s eyebrows fly up. “So do you two usually spend the holidays together?”

“Oh no,” Harry cuts in. Allie takes another very large sip of milk and tries to avoid seeing her publicist have a mental breakdown. “Just that year.”

Mickey moves on, asking something about what it’s like acting in front of only green screens. Allie tries hard not to focus on the pearl around her neck, wonders if it’d be wrong to rub it right now, wonders if people would notice.

She ends up having to tap out after the sixth wing. Harry makes it all the way to the end, and she hates him for it.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_anneandnolandeservedbetter - the look on her face when he made it to the last wing #priceless_

_halliefan15 - i bet you they’re the weird couple that shares food all the time #but they’re still cute_

_alliepressmanismyreligion - don’t mind me im just over here freaking out about the fact that he’s been driving her around for nearly ten years #i bet you they sing along to taylor swift when they drive #he's got a one hand feel on the steering wheel #the other on my heart_

_spacestationkilledme - i want life size cutouts of harry bingham and allie pressman pls_

  
  


* * *

He’s just finished hosting his second ever episode of SNL. Allie had made an appearance, of course, telling a joke about how he’s a _pain in the ass to work with_ during his monologue. Later, backstage, she says something about that’d never really been true.

“Ever?” he asks. “Not even during--”

“Never,” she cuts in, grabbing a strawberry out of some fruit basket. “Looking back, it was almost fun, insulting you and stuff. You were the only person who could give it and take it. And I missed you once you graduated.”

He pauses. “I missed you too.”

And then they’re back in his hotel room, the night before they fly out to London for more press. It’s late, after the SNL after party, so it’s not really a surprise when they both fall asleep in his bed, the TV on in the background, volume low. 

They fall asleep, and when he wakes up, she’s right there, her face pressed into his chest. Her hair still somehow smells the same as when he was sixteen. He wonders if it’s always just been all in his head.

That doesn’t matter. No, what matters is this: Harry Bingham wakes up with Allie Pressman in his arms, and it reminds him of a mistake they’d made years ago. He still thinks he wants this to be his forever.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Flying across the Atlantic never fails to make her feel like shit. Jet lag sucks. She hates it. It doesn’t help that they’re in the middle of a very busy international press tour. God, if she has to answer one more question about _what it’s like driving with Harry_ she’ll go insane.

And then, three hours after they touch down at Heathrow, just as Allie is slipping out of the shower, Cassandra calls her.

“When were you going to tell me that you were in London?” her sister asks.

Allie lets out a soft laugh. “Never? I’m only here for a week, and it’s all for work.”

“You think you could sneak away for dinner one night?”

“I don’t know, Cass. We’re pretty busy.”

“We?” Cassandra asks, and Allie can practically see her eyebrows rising.

“Yeah,” Allie says. “Harry and I.”

Cassandra laughs. “Funny you mention him, because I was actually just talking to Harry and he said that you guys have a free night on Tuesday…”

Allie sighs. How the fuck did Cass even get Harry’s number? “Did he really?”

“Yep,” Cassandra says brightly. “And I want both of you there. I want to catch up. We’ll keep it short. You can take your dessert to-go.”

“Fine,” Allie breathes out. “We’ll be there.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Sitting in the car, she worries that this is all too domestic for them, him eating dinner with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. She worries that it’s too personal, a step past what they are. She worries that one of them will say something stupid and it’ll all go to shit again.

In the back of the cab, on the way there, Harry puts a hand on her bouncing knee. “It’ll be fine,” he reassures her. “I won’t let Cassandra keep us past ten.”

She doesn’t want to tell him that that’s not what she’s worried about. “You sure?”

He nods. His hand stays on her knee. She has no urge to move it. “Positive.”

Just like usual, she trusts him.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“So you two still aren’t…?” Cassandra asks softly. Allie’s off in the kitchen with Gordie making a cup of tea.

He shakes his head. “No.”

Cassandra sighs. “I thought for sure after her birthday party a few years back. God, you two were practically attached at the hip all night.”

Harry shrugs. “Maybe it’s just not meant to be.”

Cassandra rolls her eyes, looks like she’s about to say something just as Allie walks into the room, sitting down on the couch beside Harry, leaning her head against his shoulder. Cassandra lets out a soft laugh.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They finish off the press tour on Shoe Donahue’s late night show the night before the film premieres.

“So let me get this straight,” Shoe says. Allie takes a sip from her mug. Harry’s got a hand resting on her knee. She doesn’t at all mind that the internet will probably freak out about that. “You guys have known each other for how long?”

Allie let’s out a laugh, slightly exaggerated, and leans forward. “Since I was eleven and he was ten.”

“That’s a really long time.”

She nods. “It is.”

Shoe looks between the two of them. “And you two have never dated.” They both shake their heads, and he gapes at them. “Ever?”

“Nope,” Harry says, popping the p. “I did have the biggest crush on her when we were younger, though.”

Allie turns to him, eyes wide. They’ve told this story a million times, them growing up together, going to the same schools and parties and camps. She’s never heard this part, though. “No you didn’t,” she says, offering him an out, offering him a chance to admit that it was just a joke. He doesn’t take it.

No, Harry looks right at her, straight in the eyes, so soft that any words of disbelief catch in her throat. “Oh I definitely did.” He turns back to face Shoe. “We played Romeo and Juliet in high school and it was a bit like a dream come true, honestly.”

The crowd is laughing, but she can’t stop staring at him, desperately trying to process what he’s saying. “But you were such an asshole back then.”

Harry shrugs. “Heard that was what you were supposed to do when you liked a girl.”

Shoe is shaking his head at both of them. Allie ignores him. “So that time you dropped me while we were doing trust falls--?”

“I was definitely trying to flirt with you.”

Allie turns to the audience, tries to play her shock off as something funny. She feels a little like she can’t breathe. God, it’s been so long now. They were kids back then.

Harry squeezes her knee. Her stomach does a flip flop. “We should probably be talking about the movie though, right Shoe?”

Shoe sighs, hesitant to move on. The crowd is still clapping.

“Yes,” Allie cuts it. “Let’s talk about _Fugitive.”_

  
  


* * *

  
  


_[9:28] Allie: do you think harry likes me_

_[9:29] Cassandra: Well, obviously_

_[9:29] Allie: but, like, as in more than a friend_

_[9:30] Cassandra: Yes_

_[9:30] Cassandra: Allie, believe me, that boy has been obsessed with you since we were kids_

Allie pauses, stares down at the screen. It’s not fair how many chances they’ve had and ruined and moved past. But--

Now, more than ever before, she doubts she’ll ever really be able to get over him.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The night of the premiere of _Fugitive,_ as soon as they can leave, they slip out the back and go to his place, still all dressed up. And they’re in his kitchen, dancing to a _The Cure_ song. It reminds her of years ago, of her birthday, of before.

And it’s late, the lyrics _‘I don’t care if Monday’s blue’_ playing for the fifth time. Harry’s holding both of her hands, twirling her in circles, and God, she wonders if this could’ve been their entire life if--

There’s no use dwelling on what-ifs. No, not now, not when things are good.

 _… Saturday, wait. And Sunday always comes too late. But Friday, never hesitate…_ Right now, she’s so happy that it maybe hurts a little, knowing that this could fade so quickly. She wants this to be her forever, her smiling up at him and him staring down, so bright and soft. It reminds her of before in all the best ways. 

Before.

God, she says that a lot.

Looking back, though, she thinks that maybe it was always Harry who wore his heart on his sleeve, who put it out there for her to break. She wonders if she ever really gave them a chance. Then. Now.

And the song’s still playing, loud, and she’s out of breath from singing along… It’s _Friday, I’m in love…_ And the song’s fading out, just barely, and she’s staring this time, her, not him. She wants this to be different. 

“I love you,” Allie says, and it’s certain and loud and _there._ She just wants it out there, the fact that it wasn’t just him, that’s it’s never been just him.

He grins down at her. The song’s starting up again. “I know. I love you too.”

She exhales, a soft breath. Her hands are still in his. They’re only a step apart. “No, Harry,” she says, soft this time. His grin melts a little, fades at the edges. _“I love you.”_

 _…Monday you can fall apart. Tuesday, Wednesday break my heart…_ Maybe this was how it was always supposed to go, them missing each other again and again. Maybe she had a shot when they were twenty-five and that was that. Maybe-- “I should’ve said it back that day in my kitchen.” And it’s all spilling out before she can think. No, she’s already thought about all of this, thought about it after, right after, and then later too, later as they pretended it never happened, Harry’s heart still on his sleeve and her’s tucked away.

“And I should’ve stayed when that door opened, and I should’ve called and--” God, she’s crying, she realises _…Or Thursday, watch the walls instead…_ crying as he tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I think we could’ve been something really amazing, and I’m sorry for messing all of that up.”

He’s blinking down at her like he doesn’t quite believe what’s going on. This all feels a little like a dream, or a nightmare, really. And if this is how he felt then---

The pearl around her neck feels like it’s burning her skin. She knows she couldn’t take it off even if she wanted to. 

“And I think I’m going to go now,” she says, swiping at her face and taking a step back, pulling her hands from his. “Because this is awkward, and I’m sorry for doing this, and-- and we can just add this to the list of moments that we don’t talk about.” The music is faded into the background, something like _Friday_ said over and over again, but she doesn’t care.

God, she can’t handle this, them going in circles around the other for the rest of their lives. She can’t handle another four years of barely talking. She can’t handle not having him. Maybe she never could.

  
  


* * *

He doesn’t know what’s happening, can only barely hear the music, because Allie Pressman is standing in front of him saying _I love you_ like it’s something real.

“Wait,” he starts, a hand on her shoulder, but she’s already shrugging him away. 

“It’s fine. I fucked up, and I can call and Uber, and--”

 _“I love you,”_ he interrupts with a soft laugh. She pauses, stares straight up at him, and it almost doesn’t feel real, the look in her eyes. It reminds him of being on stage, in front of a camera. He wishes she knew it was never pretend. “God, Allie, I’ve loved you since I was sixteen and you were Juliet, and…”

They’re close again _...Dressed up to the eyes. It’s a wonderful surprise..._ close enough for him to feel her breath on his cheek, and he thinks that maybe this is all he’s ever really dreamed of.

“Can I…?” she asks slowly.

He nods, smiling, soft enough that it’s only barely there. “Yeah.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Their second real kiss, in his kitchen as _Friday I’m in Love_ plays, feels a little like it was always meant to be this way, like every decision they’d ever made was leading up to this moment. She doesn’t once try to imagine a camera in front of them. She realises she hasn’t for a while now.

And there’s a pearl around her neck, flying up as he swings her in a circle, and they’re laughing so hard that it hurts, tears in her eyes. 

“I love you so much, Allie,” he says, and there’s that flutter in her chest that she never wants to go away.

“I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well i hoped you liked this chapter! 
> 
> once more, another huge thank you to [juggiebettyy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggiebettyy/pseuds/juggiebettyy)
> 
> (also pls pls pls tell me what you thought of this chapter!)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re both look the happiest that Sarah’s seen them in a really long time.
> 
> -
> 
> _or sarah (and the world) find out that it's canon_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this us up so late!
> 
> once again beta'd by the wonderful [juggiebettyy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggiebettyy/pseuds/juggiebettyy) (aka [grizzsbizz](https://grizzsbizz.tumblr.com/) on tumblr)!
> 
> the lyrics at the beginning are from the song _Best Part_ by Daniel Ceasar ft. H.E.R
> 
> hope you enjoy

**PART SIX: the epilogue**

_if life is a movie, then you’re the best part_

  
  


* * *

  
  


Sarah Bingham isn’t even a year old the first time Harry and Allie meet, but she still knows the story just as well as everyone else. It’s Allie who tells it to her, with a smile so wide it must hurt, who tells Sarah about a boy who introduced her to a world she thought could never be her own.

Sarah is thirteen, and she can’t imagine them ever being that young. She tries to imagine being that important in someone else’s story.

She has a hard time imagining that too.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Watching Allie and Harry bounce around each other is painful. They’re both so desperate to live under this veil of _just pretend._ Sarah watches it all play out.

First it’s them on set, finishing sentences and laughing at inside jokes. She thinks about how Harry’s complaints about the girl with messy blonde hair and a set in stone glare are never really proper complaints. They’re more backwards compliments than anything else, little things ingrained into stories of his everyday life. This is Allie Pressman, the girl who can’t drive to save her life and always has something snarky to say. 

Then it’s them doing press, stirring up rumors and only half answering questions. Harry asks to audition for the role of Allie’s boyfriend, and Sarah wonders how subtle they think they are. God, they both say it’s _just pretend._ Sarah doesn’t think they actually know the meaning of that word.

And there’s the holidays, Christmas and New Years and Allie wearing that necklace Harry got her. They act like a couple whenever she drags them out, and Sarah can’t help but feel a little like a third wheel (when they’re sitting next to each other at a restaurant whispering something back and forth, when they’re driving, Allie rooting through his glove compartment for her favorite pair of sunglasses, when they’re all watching a movie, Allie and Harry sitting on couch, his head in her lap). They tell her that they’re just friends. Sarah doubts that will ever be enough for them.

Then _Space Station_ comes along and suddenly they’re living together. Sarah thinks totally platonic roommates who share a bed and work together and get into fights at grocery stores is the stupidest thing she’s ever heard. They’re in denial and she’s sick of it.

The _Hallie_ fandom calls the next three years _The Drought._ Sarah calls it _The Time Two Idiots Wouldn’t Stop Being Idiots For One Second And Just Talk._ God, she swears she would’ve gone crazy if she had to listen to Harry talk about _how much he misses her_ one more time.

She’s the one who brings them back together, the one who convinces Harry that going to the wedding and talking to Allie _isn’t a bad idea._ Does she get a _thank you?_ No, but that doesn’t matter much. At this point, she’s way too invested.

 _It’s a #slowburn._

  
  


* * *

  
  


A list of things Sarah notices when she sees them for the first time after the premiere for _Fugitive._

Allie’s shoes on a shoe rack by his door. Two pairs. Running shoes (even though Allie hates running) and white slip on Vans. Vividly, Sarah remembers a conversation between Harry and Allie in which he called her basic, and she called him rude.

An _Oscar._ It’s on a shelf on top of a box, and Sarah’s pretty sure it has Allie’s name on it. Beside it is Harry’s _Golden Globe_ and a framed picture of the two of them eating In-N-Out at an after party.

A Taylor Swift song playing on the record player _...So don’t you worry your pretty little mind. People throw rocks at things that shine…_ Sarah can’t remember Harry ever even owning a record player, so she figures that’s new too.

Harry’s camera on the kitchen counter. She thinks back to the three years it spent collecting dust on his shelf. She wonders what--or who-- he’s been taking pictures of. She thinks she already knows.

And finally, them, in the middle of the kitchen, singing along to the song playing on the record player _...but this love is ours…_ Allie’s slightly off key. Harry’s not. They both look the happiest that Sarah’s ever seen them.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“So is this finally a thing?” she asks with a smirk, gesturing between the two of them and setting her bag down on the counter as they stare over at her with wide eyes.

“How did you get in here?” Harry finally asks.

Sarah rolls her eyes. “You gave me a key. Now answer my question.”

Allie laughs, rolling her eyes and glancing over at Harry. “Yeah. It’s finally a thing.”

There are a lot of things that Sarah thinks about saying. _Six years too late_ and _Enemies to Friends to Lover, Slowburn_ and even _when’s the wedding._ She doesn’t say any of that.

No, instead she says, rather wistfully, “Helena would’ve owed me two hundred dollars if you guys had just waited another week.” Sarah shakes her head as though they should’ve known about The Bet.

Harry spits out a half laugh, and Allie sighs loudly, saying, “I can’t believe you were betting on us,” as Sarah takes a seat at the kitchen island.

“Me and practically the entire cast and crew of _New Ham_ plus you’re sister, of course, and Kelly and Becca and Sam and Grizz,” Sarah lists, counting off on her fingers. “Grizz was really optimistic. He thought you two would get your act together by the end of shooting. Becca thought it’d be another ten years.”

Allie buries her face in Harry’s neck to try to hide her embarrassment while Harry wraps a protective arm around her shoulders. Sarah has to resist the urge to squeal rather loudly. She doesn’t, however, resist the urge to take a picture of them with Harry’s fancy camera. They both threaten to kill her, but it’s mostly as a joke.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The first time she sees _Fugitive,_ the night it opens in theaters in New York, she cries. Like, flat out bawls. It’s not even a sad film, not really. It has a hopeful ending and plenty of light moments.

It’s just so fucking beautiful. All of it, the direction, the score, the lighting, the costumes-- God, she loves the costumes, they feel like they're straight out of a dream. Above all else, though, it feels so undeniably like Harry and Allie.

That’s probably why she cries.

(Harry takes a picture of her bawling her eyes out. He calls it revenge for the whole betting thing. She yells back _I lost two hundred dollars,_ and Allie asks what she’s gotten herself into.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


_“Fugitive_ quietly becomes one of the best films of the decade, a clear reminder of all of the reasons why we go to the movies. It rotates through a series of quick wit, quiet introspection, and undeniably strong friendship. Leaving everything on the table, little is left to be desired as it closes with one of the best final scenes quite possibly ever.”

_\- The New York Times_

“Incredibly sharp and surprisingly romantic, _Fugitive_ makes Grizz Visser one to watch out for in the future.”

_\- The Atlantic_

“Harry Bingham is at his best as a resigned young detective in _Fugitive.”_

_\- Rolling Stone Magazine_

“It’s hard to lose when you have Harry Bingham and Allie Pressman falling in love on screen. _Fugitive_ makes good use of their natural chemistry and charm, reminding us why exactly everyone's rooting for them.”

_\- Salon_

  
  


* * *

  
  


Three weeks before Christmas, Sarah helps Allie fully move out of her old apartment while Harry stays back at their place organising (and hopefully hiding Christmas gifts; Sarah expects nothing short of perfection this year seeing as she brought them back together).

“There’s practically nothing here,” Sarah says, looking pointedly around Allie’s apartment. 

Allie shrugs, looking a bit sheepish. “I kinda moved in right after the premiere,” she says. “This place is sort of sad, honestly.”

Sarah snorts. “It’s very grey,” she points out.

“The decorator was a big fan of that modern look, and I guess I just didn’t really care,” Allie says. “Fun fact, that couch is pretty much purely for decoration. Crazy uncomfortable. Harry would give me so much shit for that.”

Sarah rolls her eyes. “Back when you two were purely platonic roommates?” Allie opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes out. Sarah continues. “Wait, let me guess. I bet it all started with you and him falling asleep on the couch after movie nights and pretending like it’s all just some friendly sleepover, only then he started complaining about his back hurting so you guys progressed to falling asleep in the same bed and cuddling every night while whispering _just friends_ over and over.”

Allie stares at her with wide eyes. “Did Harry tell you or…?”

Sarah spits out a loud laugh. “It might’ve slipped out over the phone at some point.”

“Of course it did,” Allie says with an eye roll. She moves down the hall to check the bedroom for left over things, and Sarah follows.

“Seriously though, Allie,” she starts, and Allie turns around to face her. “I’m really happy you guys finally got together.”

Allie smiles, small and soft. “Me too.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


So here’s the thing, she doesn’t mean to walk in on them.

It’s Christmas Eve and _It’s a Wonderful Life_ is playing on the TV. Cassandra and Gordie are in from London, staying in a guest room, and everyone seems to be getting along great when Harry and Allie slip out. God, they even time it like losers who think they need to sneak around in their own home.

And it’s been nearly twenty minutes, and the movies almost over, and Sarah just wants to know _what the fuck is going on._ That’s all.

So maybe she does sort of mean to walk in on them.

It’s not even like they’re half naked and making out. At least that’d be sort of funny. In that situation, she’d get to laugh and yell at them to _get a room,_ and they’d get to yell back about how they _already have a room,_ and the whole thing would just be forgotten, a moment brought a year or two later once everyone is drunk off of eggnog. 

But no, instead Harry and Allie are saying all of this personal shit, and Sarah is trying to figure out the perfect moment to butt in and tell them that _It’s a Wonderful Life_ is nearly over and that if they don’t hurry they’ll miss the ending.

From her creepy stalker/innocent-bystander-who-swears-it-was-all-an-accident spot just outside of the doorway, she can make out Harry tucking a strand of Allie’s hair behind her ear. Sarah swears she even hears him say something along the lines of, “You’re way too good for me.”

Allie shakes her head. “No way.”

_Fuck, they’re cute._

Her first thought when she sees them together having A Moment is that _the internet would love this._ Her second thought is that she needs to get away before she ruins said moment. (Sarah’s got her priorities straight, and that’s all that matters.) They don’t even notice Sarah in her rush to get away, don’t even notice as she nearly trips over her own feet and practically runs down the hall. That’s how wrapped up in each other they are.

Cassandra turns to her. “Are they having another moment?” she asks, rolling her eyes. Sarah can’t help but laugh. 

“I think so.”

Cassandra shakes her head. “They keep doing that. God, if I hadn’t waited so long for them to get together I might say something but…” Beside her, Gordie shifts to pause the movie and the three of them gossip about the pair, unpausing the film only after Harry and Allie can be heard coming downstairs.

Sarah refrains from making a joke about the two of them when they sit down on the couch together, Allie practically sitting in Harry’s lap, the movie back on in the background. No, all she does is smile. They’re the real deal, and she gets the honor of witnessing them finally not being complete idiots.

(At some point, she does walk in on them half naked and making out on the couch. She laughs way too hard while Allie hides her face in Harry’s shoulder, and Harry threatens to take away Sarah’s key.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


_Fugitive_ is nominated for pretty much every award under the sun, and Sarah couldn’t be more proud. She is not proud, however, of her Harry and Allie’s decision to not go public. Or maybe less _not proud,_ and maybe more _highly doubtful._

“How do you two plan on not getting caught? You’re not exactly subtle,” Sarah says incredulously, picking at her salad. She’s out at lunch with Harry, Allie off at a dress fitting. Harry had wanted to go with her, furthering Sarah’s _not subtle_ point.

“We can be subtle,” Harry argues. Sarah snorts. Furthering her point: the fact that combined, three of their last five Instagram posts referenced the other in some way, they continue to drive around LA getting overpriced coffee, and they’re about to spend the next three months right in front of the cameras for awards season.

“I give you two until the end of awards season,” Sarah says. That’s generous, too, seeing as Harry doesn’t seem to have much of a filter when both Allie and cameras are around. God, it’s like his kryptonite. (Sarah cannot stop thinking about when Harry asked if he could audition to be Allie’s boyfriend. She likes to send him the video every couple of months just to remind him where he started. To this day, he thinks it was a good line.)

Harry grins over at her. “I bet you two hundred dollars we’ll make it.”

Sarah mirrors his look. Maybe Allie’s right to say that it’s scary how alike they are. “Deal.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


They’re not the least bit subtle, but, the thing is, they weren’t the least bit subtle before either.

Sarah’s in LA for a bit, thinking about moving back and doing some costume design for films, and staying with them while she decides. It’s nice, reminds her of that New Years from years ago. It’s just--

She realises that going grocery shopping with them is a mistake about ten minutes too late, as they argue in the car over how Harry’s written the grocery list. (“If we go to produce first, you’ll end up crushing the tomatoes again.” “It was one time!”) God, she’d just wanted to make sure that they bought the ice cream she wanted.

“Are you two always like this?” she asks as Harry parks. Allie’s tossing a pair of sunglasses at him. 

“Like what?”

Sarah sighs.

In the store, they argue again over the type of laundry detergent they use (“I swear it’s _Tide,_ Harry.” “No it’s _Arm & Hammer _ because I remember buying it because it reminded me of Armie Hammer and we’d just watched _Call Me By Your Name.”)_ and lob fruit at each other. Sarah takes pictures of it all and posts it on Twitter. She thinks she’s earned that right.

The tweet doesn’t even matter. Harry and Allie have been throwing fruit at each other for years. It’s normal at this point, just like their continued trips for early morning coffee, and the fact that they’re often seen leaving his (their, the press doesn’t know that yet, though) house together. She wonders who their publicists are paying off to keep all of this a secret, because these two sure as hell aren’t doing all that great a job.

Allie’s pictured kissing Harry’s cheek. The tabloids don’t even speculate about it. Sarah’s easy two hundred dollars is slipping right through her fingers (and, weirdly, she doesn’t even really mind. It’s nice seeing them both so happy).

  
  


* * *

  
  


Awards season passes in a flurry of small statues and rushed acceptance speeches. Harry and Allie are attached at the hip through it all, making a point to walk all of the red carpets together and, whenever possible, do press together too.

From their house in the Hills (she wonders if Harry ever told Allie that he only got the place because she’d mentioned she’d liked it. God, he always was whipped), Sarah watches as they’re interviewed on the _Golden Globes_ red carpet.

“You two are looking great tonight,” the interviewer says. Harry’s got an arm around Allie’s waist even though it very much does not need to be there. “You’re both nominated tonight for your new film _Fugitive_ which has the most nominations of any film here. Congrats on that.”

Allie beams. “Thank you so much. I’m very excited for tonight.”

“So,” the interviewer continues. “I have a very important question for you both. Who would you want to go on a _Fugitive_ style road trip with?”

Harry laughs. “Allie, obviously.”

Allie nods. “Yeah, I don’t think I could handle spending that much time in a car with anyone but Harry.”

They both each win another _Golden Globe,_ and spend half of their speeches thanking the other. Harry says something about how _Allie’s made him a better person,_ and Allie says something about how she _can't imagine things having gone any other way_ _._

People continue to not suspect a thing.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Sarah’s not sure how, but they’re able to bring her with them to the _Oscars._ It’s all a little overwhelming, and she’s often pushed to the side so people can get pictures of the reals stars, but--

It’s nice, being there with them. It feels larger in person, the people suddenly real. And it’s nice to sit beside her brother as the nominees for _Best Actor_ are announced, to smile and clap and laugh at how nervous he seems. Allie’s holding his hands firmly in hers. There’s a bag of sour patch kids under his seat. It’s nice to know that too.

“And the winner is…” They’re seated right next to the stage, close enough that it’s a bit like watching at home. “Harry Bingham for _Fugitive.”_

Around them, it’s loud, incredibly loud, people cheering and clapping and standing to get a better view. None of it seems to matter to Harry, at least not at the start, not when Allie’s smiling at him so wide and so bright. Not when he pulls her close and kisses her, completely ignoring the fact that the cameras are fixed firmly on them, and that everything is being broadcast live on national television.

Neither seem to care, Allie still all smiles, laughing now as she forces Harry to stand. She looks at him like he’s her entire world, all soft almost as if they’re the only two people in the room. Sarah’s favorite part is when she fixes his bow tie for him (God, that’d been bugging her; it’d been lopsided all night).

“I love you so much. You deserve this,” Allie says, and Sarah really wonders if they realise what exactly is going on.

All around them, people are gasping now, loud, dramatic Hollywood gasps. She watches as the cameras pan around the room to get the reactions of different celebrities. Behind her, she swears she hears Kelly say “Finally,” to Becca. That makes Sarah smile too.

Up on stage, Harry’s giving his speech. “This is just as much Grizz’s as it is mine. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work on a film like _Fugitive._ I’d also like to thank my sister, Sarah,” he says, and Allie nudges her with her elbow. None of this feels real. “You’re the reason behind a lot of the best things in my life, but I’m pretty sure you know that already.

“And, finally, to my best friend, the love of my life, the only person I could ever imagine going on the journey on, Allie Pressman. I can’t imagine my life without you in it, and am forever grateful for that day on the sound stage nearly twenty years ago. Hope you don’t mind if I put my _Oscar_ next to yours.”

Beside her, Allie is crying, these big tears that should be ruining her make-up. Sarah’s not quite sure how she’s ignoring the camera in her face so well, somehow looking past it and straight up at him, mouthing _I love you_ and smiling as wide as she can. Faintly, it registers that she’s crying too, but not until Harry’s off the stage and Grizz is handing her tissues.

Throughout the rest of the night, Sarah watches from the side as their relationship is slowly revealed through interviews.

“Yeah,” Harry says at some point. “We’re dating, and I love her, but I also just won this really cool statue for this movie called _Fugitive_ which, you might not have heard, won _Best Picture_ and I’d love to talk about that instead.”

Harry forces their driver to stop at In-N-Out before the _Vanity Fair Oscar Party._ As they step into the restaurant, still all dressed up, Sarah turns to him and says, “I think you owe me two hundred dollars, Harry.”

Beside her, Allie laughs. Harry still has an arm wrapped tight around her waist. “It was worth it.”

Later, Sarah tweets a picture of them sitting in one of the booths, Harry staring down at Allie, and Allie’s resting her head on his shoulder. Sarah thinks that the world deserves to finally see what she’s been putting up with for the past six months.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_halliefan15 - oh my god they’re canon wtf is going on #this can’t be real #they’re fucking with us #HE KISSED HER OMG_

_harrybinghampressman - if im dreaming, please don’t wake me up #this is too good to be true #i can’t believe it_

_alliepressmanfanaccount - this moment will go down in history as the moment harry bingham professed his love for allie pressman on live tv #i will never get over this_

_HalliePressman - I’ve been watching The Kiss on repeat for the past half hour. #but that part right after #when she adjusts his bow tie #oh my god_

_newhamforever - “The love of my life” #wtf harry #you can’t just hit us with that #no context #i need to know Details_

_hallie4eva - how am i expected to function after watching allie pressman and harry bingham kiss on my tv screen #how??? #also #i don’t want to say i told you so but #d a t i n g_

_alliexharry - yep. ok #sjflshfisj #i can’t anymore #these two are trying to kill me_

_halliedeservestheworld - it took them nearly ten years, but they’re finally canon #and that’s all that matters_

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cant even begin to thank you all for the wonderful comments you've been leaving on this fic! I'm really going to miss writing these two in this universe. it's been so much fun to imagine them as actors! (so, idk maybe you'll get a fun little oneshot type thing at some point, who knows)
> 
> thank you all so much for reading and I cant wait to share whatever I write next!

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://in-my-head-i-do-everything-right.tumblr.com/)


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